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Dee Blair: The View From Sunnybank

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April 10, 2011

The View From Sunnybank: Soupy science

By Dee Blair, Local columnist ----

Dear readers: Here's the first column (slightly tweaked) that I ever published, in 2005. As soon as the temperature remains consistently warm, consider these three recipes again. I bet your plants will respond as well as mine do.

Most plants thrive on good dirt, and good food, even if some of it stinks. Here are three practical potions that have always produced excellent results for me.

You'll need:

• Four-foot stir-stick (a broom handle works fine)

• Gloves

• Facemask

• Measuring cup

• Garden hose

• Full-sun location not too near noses

• (32+ gallon) lidded rubbish bin

• Gallon bucket (to extract and tote some of the brew, later)

Choose a spot where the bin will be undisturbed; shifting it when full is a misery. It'll resist, and you'll stink of dead fish.)

Yum-Yum Tea

Fill the bin with water to two-thirds full.

Add:

8-10 cups alfalfa meal. (Careful: it's a fine powder, easily inhaled. Wear the mask. After opening the bag, seal the rest in a lidded container.)

2 c. granular Miracle Gro

½ c. Epsom salts

½ c. aluminum sulfate or chelated iron (Nurseries carry all this.)

Mix well. Cover. Steep three days in full sun. Stir occasionally.

On the fourth day hold your nose and add 2 cups liquid fish emulsion (polite terminology for squashed fish guts) just before application. Stir this stinky stuff in thoroughly. Fill a gallon bucket and make your rounds.

Using your measuring cup apply half to all of it to the earth around, say, a rose bush. Avoid the leaves so the fishy odor won't linger longer.

By the way, buy in bulk. It's cheaper.

Some plants -- like windflowers and California poppies, with long taproots and short tempers when too well fed, and artemisias (like "Valerie Finnis") -- need their soil lean. Too much of a good thing encourages sprawl and weak stems. Don't waste your tea on these sorts.

Brew more before finishing off the first batch, to avoid the three-day wait.

If you prefer dry fertilizer, try this next formula.

(Note: it takes much longer -- at least six weeks -- for dry fertilizers to be absorbed.)

Equipment:

• Gallon bucket

• Measuring cup

No-Stinkum

Into the bucket add:

3 parts dried bone meal (phosphorus)

2 parts dried blood meal, or 3 parts dried fishmeal (nitrogen)

1 part dried kelp meal. Kelp is seaweed, absolutely packed with nutrients

No-Stinkum, though model-T slow, is steady and reliable, and certainly cheaper than store-bought timed-release plant food.

Mix well, then apply a cup under established plants. Work in deeply with your hands (trowels tend to tear tender roots) then finish with a long drink -- for the plant, that is.

Finally, for perennially impatient gardeners, here's a high-octane formula guaranteed to knock the socks off plants.

Equipment:

• Small pump sprayer

• Measuring spoons

High-Test Tonic

2 T. liquid fish emulsion

1 T. liquid seaweed (Kelp)

1 t. molasses

1 gallon water

Shake well; apply to leaves (under and over, on the mist setting) until it drips off (90 percent of liquid food is absorbed instantly).

Beware: if your garden revels in this soupy science, imagine how weeds will react ... the mind boggles! So please, weed regularly. Hands and knees, rather than poisons, work best for eliminating villains.

Avoid leaf scorch. Don't spray plants with anything on days where temps exceed 80°. Instead, feed and irrigate in early mornings, and/or evenings -- and not on schedules, please, but as needed. I plan every day around the weather, especially when I tinker with tonics.

Here's to leafy beauties: may they "stink pretty," and grow up gorgeous!

Dee Blair's Sunnybank Gardens are closed for the season. Her new book, "The View From Sunnybank," a collection of her columns, is available at Horizon Books, Amazon.com and at www.deeblair.com.

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