Compost Tea Feeding Schedules

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Compost tea can be an effective strategy for balancing feeding schedules. But in the case of compost tea, more is not necessarily better. In fact, over application can actually cause significant soil imbalances. Many times, the problem of over-application of compost tea becomes compounded when the soil remains over-saturated for too long after the application of compost tea, especially if it is being used at every watering. If the microbes have a big boom cycle but then the soil is water logged, the bust cycle will lead to a much quicker anaerobic state, which can lead to a number of different problems.

There are many instances where compost tea is only applied 1x month to outdoor plants with excellent results. Just because you are seeing excellent results with compost tea, doesn’t mean that adding more will work even better.

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Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems

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This book is an important contribution to the literature on ecologically based pest management. In addition to reviewing relevant aspects of ecological theory and the broader agroecological context of pest management, it presents numerous data sets and case studies from both temperate and tropical farming systems.

Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems reflects the authors’ many years of experience, particularly in the chapters on insect management in multiple cropping systems, insect ecology in orchards containing cover crops, and non-crop vegetation effects on insect populations in crop fields.

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Dynamic Accumulators Overview

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Dynamic accumulators (DA) are plants that gather certain minerals and nutrients from the soil and store them in higher concentration in their leaf tissues. The leaves of the plants can then be used as compost, mulch or liquid fertilizer.  The truth is that most plants, in a way, are dynamic accumulators in some way because they translocate the soil minerals into their leaves. The difference however, is that certain plants, like horsetail, nettle or buckwheat, for example, tend to pull specific nutrients up in greater amounts.  Horsetail is well known for silica, nettle is well known for iron and buckwheat is known for accumulating phosphorus. Other DA”s like comfrey or yarrow are more all purpose accumulators and pull out more proportional balanced NPK ratios.  DA’s are traditionally thought of as a class of plants associated with nutritive and medicinal herbs. But please don’t confuse DA’s as a specific class of plants, for they can also include other types of flowers and cover crops as well.

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Inspecting Clones for Pests and Pathogens

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Clones are incredibly important to the facilitation of genetic preservation, but all too often they can also be a source vector for pests and pathogens. We will try to cover the main pests and pathogens you should be aware of and also some symptoms associated with those diseases.

First, it’s important to note the subtle differences between clones and seed grown juvenile plants. Clones are taken off a mother plant and seed grown plants are simply propagated from seed. Seed plants are generally much more vigorous than clones and typically have significantly less possibilities of contracting diseases that mother plants might carry. Clearly this is also codependent on the growing room cleanliness, but in general seed starts can be considered healthier with fewer problems. In this article we will be addressing the problems associated with clones, but the same analysis can be applied for seed grown plants as well.

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Company Spotlight – Parabug

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Parabug uses unmanned aerial vehicles, “drones”, for the rapid dispersal of biological controls such as predator mites to cover larger areas more rapidly.

Biological control with natural enemies is a technique often used in combination with other practices. University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources defines the ecosystem-based strategy of Integrated Pest Management as “a combination of techniques, such as biological control, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and use of resistant varieties.” 

With organic farming on the rise, many producers are implementing these eco-friendly techniques. 

Read the full article at OPN.

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Companion Planting with Cannabis

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CHA members will now have access to our PowerPoint slides as we move into our workshop series. First up is a 72 slide presentation on companion planting with cannabis. It can be located on the “Companion Planting” members page. 

The Companion Planting for Cannabis workshop will go over all the categories of cover crops and highlight their roles in soil biology and plant fertility while addressing certain caveats when utilizing these systems. It will then transition into companion planting to cover a local case study on intercropping with cannabis. Following up with numerous studies on trap cropping and banker plants, showcasing the banker plants capabilities for sustaining beneficial predatory insects. Quite a few regional farms are showcased through their companion planting techniques and interviews with farmers help highlight clear management strategies. The companion planting with cannabis series is sure to share information on how to cut costs through integration of specific medicinal and nutritive plants designed to be optimized for your microclimate!

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