Diggin for a livin' ! on Earth Day !

A "Before" shot of the garden... On April 22' 2007, which was Earth Day !

This year I have five beds to till, inocculate, plant and then love and eat from ... ! One more than last year !

Sunflowers, Phlox, Honeysuckle - Get a head start !

The first nutrients I used this year were to feed the background of beneficial microbes that were gearing up in the soil.

In addition to the Iguana Juice, I sprayed the soil with fulvic acid and vitamins from B52 and Grandma Enggy's F1.

The sunflowers (left of the F1 bottle) were just above the soil, and, as you can see, some spring perennials got a good shot of nutrients too ! I hope we're frost free too, now ...

Iguana Juice - my choice for a one-part organic-based fertilizer

I decided to try this product to reduce my labour for foliar feeding and fertilizing. Iguana Juice is a complete fertilizer, with many biostimulants added. It's not too nasty-smelling for having fish-emulsion in it, plus it has an exotic compost-tea type make up, I read here;

https://www.advancednutrients.com/advancepedia/product.php?productID=32&catID=23

It feeds through my hose-sprayer well, and it saves me handling three bottles (Grow, Micro and Bloom) each time I want to fertilize fully. I can always resort to spot-use of Grow, Micro or Bloom. I've only just primed my vegetable beds with it, along with my sprouting sunflowers.

Empress Trees move slowly at First !

... But apparently they are the fastest growing trees in the world...

Here is a close up of the same bud as shown below, on April 17 2007. This is all that's happened in three weeks...

Grapes too ! Back with huge potential !

On April 22 2007 my grape plant was looking like it was awake too, finally !

Last year I got about 200 pounds of grapes from my medium sized grape plant. It was luxuriously fed the same fertilizers and biostimulants from Advanced Nutrients, and this start looks awesome !

Just two weeks of Growth and...!

Here's the Golden Hops on April 17, in her new 2007 Spring colours, looking 'sharp' ..!

This is the normal colour, so I wonder if it takes warm temperature as well to make it go green again, as it did last July; not just my using Advanced Nutrients and fulvic acid twice a week..?

I started to read about plants and silicates, and was considering adding this stuff to my feeding regimen:

https://www.advancednutrients.com/advancepedia/product.php?productID=3&catID=23

It's liquid potassium silicate, and you just need to use a few drops per litre every time you fertigate the soil.

This hops plant is covered in glassy-sharp cystolith hairs that are perfect for gripping things when climbing, and act like razors to insects ! These sharp hairs are made of silicates and carbonates. Some types of plants are called "silica accumulators" since when they are fed SiO2 like in Advanced Nutrients' Barricade, they pack-on up to 10% more dry weight, all in silicates !

I was going to pre-treat all my soil beds with a generous spray of Barricade, before planting, thinking that if I just packed some into the soil, it would last a while before needing to supplement the roots again with SiO2. Advanced Nutrients does not recommend foliar feeding with SiO2.

Return of The Golden Hops !

On April 1, here is the extent of the growth on my Golden Hops.

Notice that it's 'golden' coloured again. Last season it had been so well nourished by my foliar feeding with Advanced Nutrients' Grow, Micro and Bloom along with Collosal Bud Blast, B52, Voodoo Juice, Piranha and Tarantula, that it became almost all green ! The cone crop was huge too, so if I keep that up, this year will be even better ! !.

And here it is; spiny stemmed, 'golden' leaved and purple, back with a vengance, ready to take it out on the grape plant, growing around it. The grape is still dromant at the time of this photo.

March 25 2007 It's Spring Again !

My Empress Trees are starting to grow; look at that tiny nub go !