I'm a bit new about giving out my "secrets" but thought someone might like to know. Please don't waste the whiskey.

I tried planting green beans around the inside of my aspargus bed this year. I also have the bed enclosed with PVC caging with wire - skunks - don't ya know.

Anyway, the companion combination was great. The beans "fixed" nitrogen and the aspargus loved it. I had a bumper crop of beans and it really helped my fledgling aspargus bed.

This is the 3rd year - and I hope to have great yields from now on.

That was my biggest surprise this year - but not my only experiment. I hope to grow Stropharia mushrooms as soon as I can figure out how to keep them happy.

Bye now.

The Grandma Putz are the old hand-me-downs collection
of stuff that has stood the test of time..

Most of those do work.

I was lucky I bought my first few booklets from K-Mart for $1.95 (no-longer available)

I do not support the human urine addition to the formulas.

-Mike

A shovelful of finished compost into a 5 gallon bucket
A handful or two of alfalfa pellets
Fill the bucket with water
Let steep for at least a few days (the longer the better)
Skim off the light material that floats to the top
Stir the bucket occasionally
Let the big stuff precipitate out so the water clarifies
Dip out a quart into another 5 gallon bucket
Fill the remainder with water
Keep refilling with water until the tea is obviously weak
Spread the bottom sludge on the lawn or around the garden

Freely water all your house plants and garden with this everytime or every other time you water. No fears of overfertilizing. Promotes healthy growth and helps with both insect and disease control. Seems to reduce black spot on roses. Seems to retard blight in tomatoes and scab in potatoes. The alfalfa adds a good boost to the tea but can also encourage a bad odor as it steeps. So you can elect to not add the alfalfa pellets if you want. Or use the mixture quickly before it gets to awful.

The beer, cloa and soap, helps a compost pile about the same as any of the high priced compost starters.

I sprayed the area where the sb were and within moments it stopped em dead in their tracks. Maybe someone has used ammonia for purpose before.

The squash bugs that survived have now moved on to the gourds. I used straight dish soap this time, quite a bit too. (no ammonia) The younger ones died but it didn't phase the adults.

Reason is there is a thing called salt build up, Ammonium nitrate is a salt. In excess it can kill your plants.

Just a gut feel

FWIW
Byron

Hard to beleive, but you really should read the label on your dish soap these days. I just about fell over when I saw that I was not supposed to add bleach to a new type! I wouldn't anyway, but I do know people who add bleach as a matter of course. Read your labels!

For mixing up garden tonics, use the cheapest dish soap, without any of the fancy "improvements". Baby shampoo is safer and does the same thing.

Mark in Mass.

My dog picked one spot to pee in every day. The grass was dead there all summer. Finally in about November, I sprinkled granulated sugar on the spot. We got some rain and today, that is the only green spot in the yard. While the rest of the lawn (St Augustine) went dormant, my one "dog spot" is tall and greener than ever.

I disagree with any tonic that puts alcohol on the yard. Alcohol is a disinfectant which non-selectively kills bacteria and fungi. If you dilute it and blow it through the air to evaporate the alcohol, you might have a chance, but the beneficial bacteria and fungi in your soil have a hard enough time surviving without pouring alcohol on them.

Some of his tonics are there.

As for the Beer in various formulas.... unless it is a mixture of nutrients in beer or perhaps the sugar content.. I could not see it being of any benifit to water your plants with a solution that is carboated...afterall.. roots breathe oxygen... not carbon dioxide

A couple tbsp tomato juice on your dogs food every time it eats helps reduce the ammonia content.

Tobacco formula,

If you used the Baker mix, Soap, tobacco juice and mouthwash you would find a very pleasant oder, I use lemon scented dishsoap and mint mouthwash A very nice smell.

If you are mixing per Mr Bakers instuctions you can't smell
the tobacco at all, The nicotine extracted from 1/3 oz of chewing tobacco into a 1 gal concentrate (this does have a slight oder), then diluted with 320 gals of water (or 8 oz concentrate per 20 gal of water or 1/2 oz per gal)

Byron

Water
1/2 tsp ivory dish soap (or baby shampoo)
1 tsp instant tea
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cooking oil
liquid fertilizer (appropriate to amount of water based on your brand)

I spray this on my houseplants once a week or so.

If I am spraying my roses, veggies, fruits or blooming plants I add: 1/2 capful Spray N Gro (blooming/fruiting hormone)

Every plant in my house and yard gets this mixture minimum every 2 weeks and I have blooms like you would NOT believe.

OH - and my other favorite "tonic" is any clear pop like 7up or Sprite - any leftovers in cans go straight into houseplants.

To the office poster above, I too grew an office plant on black coffee. It DOES work:) But the poor plant NEVER got any sleep!! LOL

I also sprinkle coffee and tea grounds around any plants, or work them into the soil.

Dog urine contains urea a very good source of nitrogen. Urea is broken down rapidly by urease containing bacteria in the presence of water to ammonium carbonate and then further breaks down into ammonia and carbon dioxide. Until the ammonia is broken down to nitrate, the area will have a high pH and high ammonia level. This is what kills seeds and small roots. After the ammonia is broken down to nitrate (usually a matter of hours if its warm out) the area pH will lower. So the net result is a lower pH.

Ammonia is a gas. The ammonia you clean with is this gas dissolved in water. If you spray this ammonia/water combination on your plants, this ammonia will simply be lost to the air, contributing to higher than normal nitrogen levels in the air that are blamed for weird and bizarre north
Atlantic algae blooms. One of the reasons you are taught to scratch in fertilizers into the soil is to prevent the nitrogen (plants use either ammonia or nitrate ions as nitrogen sources) from being lost to the air (volatization).

At any rate that what I remember from ornamental horticulure 121.

What we found out is that there are several theories as to why some dogs urine is bad and some is not. Most of them involve diet. The link below explains. Personally, I don't buy #2, the concentration of the urine. My dog is crated for several hours a day, the grass-killer has free access to water all day. his should be less concentrated.

On a side note, Lilacs love human urine. (Potty training story-don't ask the details, just take my word for it.)

Braidnboots, somewhere I picked up something that is rattling around in my brain about the fermenting thing. The fermenting process forms sugars that feed beneficial organisms so they mulitply rapidly, thus providing a boon of beneficials to the area when you use the tea.

Also, just a general comment/question - I'd be leary of using tobacco in any concoction in the garden - couldn't that transmit the Tobacco Mosiac Virus? I know some plants aren't affected, but I wouldn't want to risk introducing it to the garden on the chance it might make it to plants that are affected. (Tomatoes and other nightshades, for example.)

Diana

The original Tobacco juice formula was tabacco, soap and mouthwash nothing else, I have used it about 10 years and never even had leaf scortch say mothing about killing plant. I have used it on just barely emerging seedlings with no problems

Phantomfrye

FWIW ALL varieties of chewing, cigar and pipe tobacco have been TMV free for 40 years. In 98 the cigarette tobacco was 0.237% ~ this is US crop..

Betty Bloomers

Adding ammonia what happens is that ammonia combines with nitrogen in the air and soil producing ammonium nitrate. Read side panel of your fertilzer box Nitrogen derived from Ammonium nitrate

Tea look at the micro nutrients in tea

Cola look at the side label, Preservative Phosphoric acid P2O5 Look at the side panel of most fertlizers Phosphour derived from Phosphoric Acid P2O5, Plus sugar to feed the micro herd

Beer you could sub with a pinch of ale yeast. A homebrew works better.

Guniess uses Nitrogen for their bubbles

Dog P try 1 cup of molasses or corn syrup in a 20 gal hose end sprayer. The high carbon content will help neutralize it

Human urine, best use is around the outer perminiter as a deer deterent. I have seen tracks 25 ft away from my garden
but no damage. Not on my veggies

Also, I read somewhere that peroxide (the kind sold in beauty supply places) is also very good for plants

Seed germination: 1/2 oz. to 1 pint of water. Soak overnight.
Indoor/Outdoor plants: 1 oz. to 64oz of water. Spray twice weekly.
Mildew Plants: 2 oz. 6% H202 to 64 oz. water spray twice weekly. (maximum 5 oz.)
Mold: Wash or spray area with 3% H202.
Fertilizers: H202 will neutralize chemicals in mixture.
Insecticide spray: 4-8 oz. plus 8 oz. of mollasses or white sugar, per gallon of water.

See link for interesting article

Yep, you can use moth balls or moth crystals and the cats will stay out - you can also use indoors the keep the cats away from things you don't want scratched or broken.

Wear gloves. The stuff is nasty.

Thanks, Richard
SE PA

I have nothing to try it on now but I would like to foam the leaves of something with dish soap and a liquid folar feed and see how it compares to just folar feeding - I have never been impressed with folar feeding in the past. Maybe I need to foam it.

I haven't tried it on many things but I did use it on my young african violets .. It worked very well.

has anyone else tried this recipe??
And if so, how did it work for you??