The Plant Pub: Fertilizer Beverages

Ah! It's been so refreshing yesterday, the intense heat that's been on my patio for so long finally broke through. I rolled up my bamboo shades and let the little plant babies take in some cool sprinkle of rain. I don't think the peppers really like this different weather. It's more atypical for this time of year though. 

I can go on for ever about what's actually in the rain. All the pollution in the atmosphere being brought down in the form of water, how it's slightly acidic from the emissions from the city and what not. But to be honest, that's not all that intense here in this specific patch of the world (it rains so often, nothing really sits in the atmosphere too long). Now if I were back in Colorado, I'd be highly over protective of the rain water in my plants. I'd much rather collect the rain and snow in barrels and purify it however that's illegal in Colorado (*face palm* omg, back to this). Sometime at the end of the season I will be eating part of these plants and whatever toxins they take in, my body will take in too. Some people don't think about that and what the huge agricultural companies are putting onto the produce as pesticides and fertilizers. Some of it is really dangerous and only now are

actual image from my facebook feed

some of the information about them coming out to the public. Everyday I see more and more posts about them on facebook and twitter showing proof that there are people who are educating themselves on the matter. And that makes me rather proud and happy. There are still some amazing ignorance that persists throughout all the information and proof...that or they're aware but don't care. I'll save the GMO rant for another article. It's getting closer and closer to the 25th of May and there's something special happening on that day (no, not my birthday). 

But as I said in my Quest for Organic Pesticide article, There are many at home remedies for taking care of unwanted pests in the garden. There's just as many ways to do this for fertilizer too. I mentioned in the Memory Reflections post that a lot of nutrients from the soil are not returned because the produce and plant is shipped out to the consumers. I am growing primarily in pots and buckets (BP free plastic buckets) so I don't have to really worry about this so much. I just get a medium planter soil that has a lot of peat moss mixed with forest compost. It says 'organic soil' but how much can you really trust labels these days? My starters like the mix though, the peat moss helps hold in the moisture they need and it's soft enough to let baby roots quickly penetrate the soil. I've looked up lots of information about starting a worm compost for when my gardening really takes off, but my partner has concerns about potential smell of rotting stuff bothering the neighbors. We are after all in a confined apartment space and I'm already kind of breaking the rules with my bamboo shades. 

We were laughing the other day cause there was a leaf company that comes and cleans out the gutters and takes the leaves and gunk with them and then right across the street was a mulch company who buys that gutter gunk from the company across the street, turn it to mulch and compost and sell it back to us in the form of composted soil mix. Lovely little ironic system going on there huh? It's so silly. What you can do for yourself, why not do it? I always hear the excuse that no one has the time to do it. Well, honestly gardening doesn't take that much of your time to do. The plants aren't going anywhere in anytime soon.    

Aquaponic Garden

There was something that came up not too long ago when I first started talking about the gardening to my partner. He mentioned the Aqua-ponic garden. One where you farm fish of some kind (tilapia or catfish normally) and the phosphoric acid waste of the fish poo is filtered up to a layer of tanks where plants have their roots right in the water instead of soil. The plants filter out the fishy wastes as nutrients they can absorb and the cleaned up water returns to the fish tank. It's a very interesting cycle that is almost 100% self sufficient. The only part where it needs some intense care is getting set up in the first step. Which, I can recommend a store here that actually specializes in selling the equipment, yep the Portland Hydroponic & Organic shop. I didn't start talking about this with the guys running the store the day I was there looking for pesticide and fertilizer. It's a pipe dream for me to think about starting such a system on my tiny little patio, as cool as it would be. But if you have the space, I say do it! Do it for the both of us! 

They actually sold a form of fertilizer that that is fish emulsion, similar to what you would get from the fish farm in an aquaponic system. And it was $10 for a huge jug of that stuff! Of course I got something a lot smaller for my mini-garden (cause that stuff has a shelf life). And this was mixed with squid emulsion and it's high in nitrogen and phosphorus, the NPK most plants need (* NPK, if you don't know, is the abbreviation for the three main nutrients a garden needs. Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium). You just mix the dark brown ooze into a gallon of water and water the plants with it. Now, the first couple of times I did this, my patio had the distinct smell of a lake. Not too terrible fish smell, but I wouldn't want to put this stuff on my indoor plants. Then my home would smell like the

General Organics Bio Marine Fertilizer

nearby Sushi Hana. But it is amazing stuff. My tomato plants seem to like it the most, they were kind of limp and some of their new true leaves were fading in color (I'm not experienced enough to say why...), but as soon as they got a refreshing Squid Poo Beverage, they perked up and have a lot more green and vibrant true leaves. And this is an effect of two light feedings in a matter of four days.


The company that sells this product, General Organics, I haven't done a lot of research on them on my own. The gentleman at the store gave me a little run down about the product and the company itself (while cracking a few jokes on Monsanto). He said the way that this company 'harvests' the cold processed squid is in a way that is tenderly careful about its footprint on the environment. How does this guarentee that the product is organic? It doesn't unfortunately. However, the term 'organic' gets thrown around a lot these days, because some companies see it as a trend. Many people do too and shop organic cause they've been told it's better without really thinking why they should. People will trust the labels if it says organic and then most of the product has the main ingredient as high fructose corn syrup. Not very organic...is it? 

Now when shopping for sea food and whether that's organic or not is a different subject all together. It comes from the ocean. There's no super huge squid hatchery somewhere, messing with the genetics of the squid. At least... none I've come across reading about (it would be twisted reading straight from a Soylent Green kind of nightmare). There are, however, huge hatcheries messing with the genetics of Salmon. But, one could argue that the ocean isn't really 'organic' with all the oil spills and garbage being tossed in the mix. Not to mention the question which ocean are these squid emulsions being collected from? Was it the Pacific, where there was that nuclear waste seeping out from the Japanese plant? Or the Atlantic, where it is getting toxic chemical leak from the cover up of the Gulf of Mexico's big oil dump (that was too big to call an oopsy 'spill')? These are important questions to think about when you're shopping for anything, be it products to use on your garden or food you're going to fix and put on the table. 

The interesting thing I find about this product, is that all over the label it has many different sites (not just the main General Organics website) for information about the company and product. Miracle-Grow, the light fertilizer I've used in the past, doesn't have that at all. In fact, you have to kind of question where they get their NPK at all in that stuff. It's mostly processed chemicals. More often than not, when I use that stuff it makes my plants sick. The young plants, it kills almost instantly. This Bio Marine squid poo can be used on very young plants, seedlings in fact. Seedlings are very fragile at times with shallow roots and baby leaves and this product is guaranteed safe for them. That alone tells me that it's a rather good investment, cause those baby plants need the extra help they can get.

I've been using this fertilizer along side my new pesticide for the marigolds too. I think it's helping them stay durable and strong through the turmoil of being snacked upon by aphids. The main pot that got the infestation first, lost almost all it's blossoms, but there's almost no bugs in it now, and in fact a ladybug moved in and started eating at the few that survived. I still don't like the ladybugs...  :(

The Quest for Organic Garden Pesticide

I took a couple of days for myself. Meaning I've done very minimal things to my garden, other than the little watering and moving some of my plants to get optimal sun or out of sun or whatever. You get the idea. 

In those two days, one of my planters of marigolds got an unwanted house-guest. Some kind of insect I'm not sure which, whether they are mites or aphids. All I could possibly think about are moving some of my spiders over there like an all you can eat buffet special. But my spiders don't like that kind of handling, they're still rather little and they're doing such good work in my other planters. My other option was running down to the Fred Myer garden center and buying a packet of ladybugs.... but... er... I'm afraid of lady bugs and would much rather not.

In my Mini-Farming book, which gave me all the information to get started with my garden, they talk about active and passive ways to deal with pests. It talks about how crop rotation helps (which I didn't think important to my circumstance), and proper composting and watering can help lower disease. Active ways to deal with pests are some simple at home remedies such as hot peppers steeped in a gallon of water with an added drop of dish soap can protect cabbage, onions and carrots from maggots. It mentions oil and soaps can harm the waxy coating on the bugs that force them to leave. The book even mentions the authors own home natural pesticide made from concentrated steeped tea from the Pyrethrum Daisies. As home-o-pathic I like to try to be, I wanted to find some of the pyrethrum daisies and make some myself, but I felt more pressured to help the marigolds now and not waste time waiting to grow, dry and steep daisies.  

I've read somewhere that certain plants companion-ed with tomatoes and carrots are rather helpful to them. Marigolds, carrots and garlic are helpful to tomatoes and so on. I told this to Jon when I did more research into it and he's like, "Okay whatever... crazy lady" and when he's at work he sees all sorts of people's homes and gardens and he started to notice the golden little flowers all around the tomato beds. And I was like, "Yep... now you believe me." It either means I caught onto an old traditional idea, or the rest of the town is just as crazy as I am. 

Warning: bugs

The Marigolds I see as a form of protector for my other plants, which is why I don't feel all too terrible about the aphid attack on them, but I worry... when they are done munching the heck out of those plants, will they turn their interest on my tomatoes as dessert? That scared me. So I did some research on a natural organic company that's near by. There's a very famous, five star garden center that's actually a few blocks from my house, but they don't carry the same kind of product I wanted. Mostly Miracle-Grow products, which I find frustratingly not effective. I also needed to start investing into some organic fertilizer as well, for when the time comes later in the season. 

So in my search I came across this recently defined garden warehouse called Portland Hydroponics & Organics. Thought, why the heck not try it? It's located 10 minutes away, worth the time to check it out. And I was rather impressed. The place was run by those type of people you'd find working in Abercrombie, without the shallowness and being overly perfumed with junk. These guys had freaking braincells. Now as a natural pesticide for organic gardening, I heard raving reviews of this product that contained Neem oil. I tried to touch on some research before I went there. It's derived from an African tree and it causes the insects to go sterile so they can't reproduce to out of control. And as soon as I asked, the guy pointed out the neem oil. Now it was a rather large jug that I knew I wouldn't be able to use all the way for my little garden, and it was heavily concentrated for $20. Wonderful bargain, I knew, if I had a much larger space and twice as many plants, but it wasn't in the cards for me to invest in it now. So he recommended another brand I heard about called Safer. It's a 3-in-1 garden spray that kills mites and pests and can also help treat fungus (which has been the death of a few of my house plants over the winter).  It is already pre-diluted in water solvent and in a spray bottle (image is not entirely the same as what I actually bought). 

Organic natural pesticide/fungicide

Now as a natural and organic pesticide, it mostly makes up of Potassium salts and fatty acids and sulfur. And it smells like butter with a hint of citrus. My grandmother told me many times that marigolds are smelly and gross flowers that grow like weeds. And yes they do, but I've always liked their fragrance and they attract butterflies while warding off wasps, but now my marigolds smell like butter and citrus. Last night in late evening, I sprayed the marigolds down, and the stuff started working instantly. The bugs are dead, their carcasses are still clinging to the buds, and the plants didn't seem all that affected. Until an hour later, all the little golden flowers started wilting and dying. and I was having mini panic attacks. "Wait a minute! this is organic and safe! why are they dying!?" Well the plant part itself isn't damaged at all. They're perfectly fine, and in fact newer little buds are blooming now, and it's just the flowers that had bugs that are drying up and being rejected. So I'll have to watch it for a few days to make sure it's alright. But I have the feeling that they're going to bounce back just fine. They are after all in Grandma's words, weeds. Took her forever to kill hers and she was trying to get rid of them.

Memory Reflections: Summer Trouble

  Today is somewhat cooler than it was this time of yesterday (and during all the last two weeks). The temperature counter in my kitchen said it got up to 96 degrees on my patio. This isn't a good reference to the rest of the town because my patio has a special talent of capturing all day sun. People would be, 'that's great, we don't get to enjoy sun 8 and a half months out of a year'. And it is great when there are cool currents still passing through to ease the blaring temperature fluctuations. However, when the air is stagnant and the sun is intense, everything wilts and it doesn't matter if the general high is 86 degrees, mine will be 98. Plants don't like this, as I mentioned yesterday at the end of my introduction. The first summer at our apartment I tried to garden, and it's fairly easy here, everything is green and grows in the Pacific Northwest... but everything just burned on my patio. It was depressing to say the least... reminding me of my hometown all too much. I couldn't garden there because mountain desert climates are not very forgiving unless you have a garden of cactus and junipers. And that doesn't give you any tomatoes, I'm afraid. *sigh* I found a way to remedy that! Well, my mother did when she came out to visit last summer. She got me some small simple bamboo shades to put up, and they filter out some of the sunlight so it's not as intense or hot to my plants, and this year my garden is flourishing! I'm excited to be a  proud plant momma, everything is green and lovely and I would never have been able to do it without those bamboo shades my mom got me. I'm beyond thankful for them.

So now that's the introduction to my patio. I think about it so often when I come out to tend to the plants. And when it is warm and I sit on my little seat here watching the forest like trees behind my apartment building, I'm constantly reminded how, once upon a time my hometown looked so similar to this. Of course it used to actually snow there, and here it simply rains in a constant drizzle. Also, it's not illegal here to barrel rainwater and use it for gardening... and yet it is illegal to do so in Colorado. They state that the rain belongs to the government and not the people even though it lands on your property...and then when arguing that, they go "besides it's not good for the underground aquifers, you're robbing it of its water source!". Well, studies have proven that to be untrue and that redirecting that rain water in a good positive way can actually help the environment.

I have the feeling this is going to turn into a rant about how the bureaucratic system with it's infinite ignorance has been destroying my hometown. And no, this isn't going to be a rant about Global Warming, because that's not the relevant situation to the extreme changes in Colorado's environment. The arguement of Global Warming is that everytime you fart, you destroy the environment, and everyone's carbon emissions for simply breathing is adding to that. So stop breathing and the planet will be saved. "Nope" I say..."I'm going to leave the political stuff at the door and we can pick that up when we leave".

No, the arguments for Colorado specifically are a series of situations that have led to it's progressive undoing. The region I'm most familiar with is the southern region, Fremont county to be exact. And the interesting and difficult thing about arguing and pointing this place out is that the Fremont county encompasses a large amount of different geographical areas. Plateaus deserts, wetlands from the river, plains, and deep canyons cut through rather impressive mountainous landscapes... it's all rather unique and spectacular. Like the entirety of Oregon shoved into a rather small scale model. Now within the ten years of my higher awareness of what's going on outside of myself, things have changed. Within the last five years horrifying fires have been devastating the environment around my little hometown region. The Waldo canyon fire in Colorado Springs, I was there for that one, is just one of the examples of the other 12 that happened all around the state in that summer alone. I was visiting family and the fire itself was roughly 30 minutes away as the crow flies. The winds kept it from coming towards us and instead had it blow to Colorado Springs, burning some rather expensive houses, instead of low income trailer parks with empty lands in between.

side note: 
(There's a little Robin Hood "HA HA" moment in there that I'm sure you can tell I really don't care about the rich people and like to think it's a pretty nasty Karma lesson... There was another Robin Hood "HAHA" moment last summer here when they said that there was some E.Coli poisoning in the water source because that resevoir of water for the town was kept near the Zoo and sometimes shit runs off into the water.... well the people who get that water in their tap are all upscale people who have seven bedroom homes for three people and import FiJi water just to bathe in and probably didn't have any issues with the e.coli except when Fifi the family's show poodle suddenly starts feeling sick because she's given half-ass filtered tap water) .... side ramble, sorry... Back to the fires!

I had an interesting conversation about them, because so many people were upset (as I was too). So many people were stating "mother nature is a powerful bitch" blah blah blah...mother nature can be unforgiving..... well I'm sorry to break it to those people but the fire was not Mother Nature. In fact, they caught a guy who was responsible for setting three of the smaller fires alone. So... Mother nature is responsible for that pyromaniac's intentional fire starting? Mother nature is responding to our meddling. People who started to settle the areas around my hometown many many years ago, were told to plant Russian Olive trees around their homesteads when they cleared out large areas to be used for agricultural. Russian Olive trees are fast growers, and they can handle dry climates, which is what the original settlers wanted from them (interesting thing about the Russian Olive trees, they have long sharp needle spines and if you pluck the leaves and crush them, they smell like citric oranges *something from my childhood*). However, the area wasn't entirely dry climate, and the Russian olive trees found water, exploded to exponential levels and sucked all the water from the native plants, killing them and depleting the top soil of all it's nutrients. These are common characteristics of a dangerous invasive species. That...was man's doing. Not Mother Nature's.  In response, the area is dryer, and harder to cultivate. Leaving it to be a nice kindling box for potential fires.

An Example of a Healthy Colorado pine forest.

Another thing man did as a response to his first mistake was to become deeply conservative about the forest and the remaining native trees there, working to keep it from changing. The intention behind it was rather good, but it was harmful like the Russian Olive trees. If you ever drive through the area between Colorado Springs and Canon City, you'll notice what I'm talking about. The pine trees are rather small like a series of super anorexic 13 year olds, crammed together in a tuna can. You'll notice that as a tree dies in this environment, it doesn't fall to the ground, it merely leans up against it's neighbors and wither into an ugly dry stick. Now, when a tree dies, it falls to the ground and moss and worms and insects and mold come in to decompose it so all the nutrients that the tree borrowed to sustain itself returns to the earth so more trees and plants can use it. It's a natural cycle, the system in which life is supposed to do it's business. That tree leaning against its neighbor isn't decomposing into the earth, it's becoming bleached and petrifying in the sun...the nutrients it took aren't being returned to help future saplings. Do you see the problem? We have the same issue that happens with our food production all the time. We grow produce on a farm, then those plants get harvested and shipped to the supermarkets to be sold. Those nutrients leave the soil with the produce, and if the farmer doesn't do something to replenish the soil, the next season's crop won't be as healthy or as nutritious. Farmers know this now, they had to learn it through the dust bowl of the 1930s. Lessons... that's what they are. The Waldo Canyon fire.... and the other fires around the state... were lessons for us.

An Example of a Sick Colorado Pine Forest outside Co. Springs

 The only way that tree leaning against its neighbor can be returned to the earth is when it burns into ashes. Which, sadly enough, causes the semi healthy trees around it to burn too because the dead one turns into a lovely fire ladder.... and the "healthier neighbors" are not fire resistant at the top of the tree. This is going further into man's meddling.... the pH value is being altered, and not by mr. so-and-so's Diesel truck emissions. Barium and aluminum is creating a poison in the soil that's making the trees sick so they die and then lean up against their neighbors instead of properly decomposing. Barium and aluminum pollution isn't something the common day people can do to the earth. The only thing I'm going to say about this, is this is something that was started as government tests in the southern Colorado region (cause the military are big out there) back in 1965. A project called Geo-Thermal Engineering (basically a form of weather control). I'll refer you to a movie if you want more information about it... called "What in the world are they spraying?" and about chem-trails behind planes and jets and its effects on the natural vegetation. Now it alludes to some conspiracy ideas, and I'm not sure where you stand on them, but I see the evidence in the destruction to my home forests and speculation can only go so far.

Here's the link for that, cause I get the feeling you may not actually put the time into finding it.  ( What In The World Are They Spraying? [full length] )

Doesn't matter the question of why, what their motivation is if it's a negative "New World Order" agenda, or a corporation conspiracy to making money or this is how they control weather from HAARP or if they are sincerely wanting to do good for the environment.... doesn't matter.... the point is, they are spraying intentionally and there are side effects of what they are spraying. Speculate whatever way you want, but don't for God's sake, blame it as Mother Nature because it is man's meddling and these things are coming back to nip us in the butt. And don't bother with you're messages of Global warming because blah blah blah- Southern Colorado is not a good example of the rest of the world's environmental issues. Just like the temperature on my patio is not a good example for the rest of the town's weather.

ugh. I'm tired now... and made myself very angry over this and partially spiteful and bitter. I'm a passionate individual at times, and sometimes I just care too much. It's irrelevant to me now, I don't interact with Colorado except in my memories and the few weeks that I spend there in summer. I've spent 19 years of my life in Colorado, I know it better than anywhere else. And in my hometown alone I see things and make connections others don't and at times it frustrates me to no end. That's the reasoning behind the condescending tone I have at times. I apologize if it got preachy, and I apologize if it was offensive to you and your beliefs. I don't knock anything down because everything is connected in a way. Just find the connection...follow it and understand it. That's all I ask really.

And you just got yourself 20 brownie points if you stuck through and read the whole thing. Congratulations!

New Introductions

The Burtree Woman:

I did some research, as many people normally do, to find the right name for a blog. Naming things used to be a talent of mine (I had a philodendron plant that I named Phil once... but that wasn't my best name for something inanimate). They advise something unique, something that would sound catchy. For some reason I wanted something plant based and yet alluding to a spiritual context (though I am not particularly spiritual in any way, I think the nature part is coming from my resent fondness of gardening). So in my shoveling of the internet's vast wealth of "stuff", I came across a site called "Strange Lands". It's a UK site that delved into the mythical folklore of fays and spirits. The tree spirits part of the page I found really interesting.

Elder Mothers, or Burtree witches, are a type of tree spirit that, according to the site, invited images of an elderly tree that had rough bark and harped on humans for being such nuisances in the forests they inhabited. Sometimes they gave good advice and were sought for their wisdom as they're like the grandmothers of the natural world of forest spirits. As soon as I came to that conclusion, the memory of Grandmother Willow from the Pocohontas Disney movie came to mind. Laughable though it was, it sparked on something unique that resonated in my own personality. I'm kind of like that tree! Er...the Burtree spirit, not Grandmother Willow. Ha ha.

Grandmothers, or just in general elderly people, always have a way of being condescending especially when it comes to the younger generation it seems. Their stories always start with, "When I was your age..." and usually end in a lesson of "young people are selfish and so ignorant" and they keep on this rotating cycle. As you're reading this, you're probably going, "yeah okay, old people are annoying sometimes and don't understand me." but when they were actually 'your age' they were probably having an old person tell them the same thing... "you young kids these days don't know how good you got it!". Okay, Grandpa. Now, as a disclaimer, I'm not an older woman. I'll be 22 years old later this month actually. Though I do tend to share that nagging, condescending personality grandmothers tend to have. I enjoy knitting and have a pathological thought process that lends help when I need to lead someone into a conclusion. Like how Grandma's are when they guide you into understanding that you messed up big time and are straying from the respect they are entitled to. Anyways... I thought it would be perfect for my kinds of rants and general thoughts that I plan on publishing to my blog. I have good thoughts, at least sometimes and offer opportunities of enlightenment for taking the time to explore a different insight or opinion.

Other times, however, it's just confrontational opinions that others find issues with and then ignite the gunpowder spilled on the old wooden bridge between the town of My Reasoning and their town "Lack-of-an-Open-Mind-vill". I understand their misinterpretations, but I hope that if they turn their back saying "burtree witch would be more accurate than 'woman'." they leave with the understanding thought that even though they may disagree with me, may even be the kind to protest funerals or be the kind to say 'God hates you because of your terrible choice in shoes'...I will fight passionately for their right to express themselves. Because, even if I'm offended and will gladly give it a try to convince them to try my way at least once, I respect them for being who and what they are. Nobody is really perfect (except my Grandpa, he can fix anything and he's always been the strong quiet type with a magnificent mustache and tan). Okay that might have been a little biased...

Anyhow, this is my first post, my introduction to the blog (a real blog, my other blog is just a story I've been writing for quite sometime now). I will leave the thought at this because my plants look like they're getting pretty thirsty. The afternoon sun makes my patio nearly 90 degrees during the day and my plant babies don't really like it. Except the peppers, they handle the heat rather well. But they're weird that way...