We are currently migrating the site to a new platform, so everything might not be quite where you left it. Unfortunately the online shop did not make it through the pandemic but there are some interesting developments in the pipeline, the first of which being that the databases are once again searchable! So the NPK of Everything Organic and the Mycorrhizal Plant Database are a little more up to date. As ever, you can continue to support ourselves and others by purchasing online from our friends instead!! Aquarium Gardens Aquacadabra Horizon Aquatics Real Aquatics Riverwood Aquatics We are also able to keep good stock at Amazon - Amazon UK Amazon ES Amazon IT Amazon FR Stay safe. Nigel and Bryan

Generally when it comes to bacteria and microbes we'd be referring to the aerobic type you'd hope to produce in a Compost Tea (AACT) system, the reason being that the presence of anaerobic bacteria in these systems are nearly always 'bad news'. However there are useful anaerobes out there and it is very much worth looking in to putting them to use in your horticultural endeavours!! Enter Lactobacillus.... Lactobacillus is a facultive anaerobe that we are generally interested in for it's ability to ferment a wide variety of things. It is this process that makes Lactobacillus or LAB the cornerstone of a range of processes the savvy gardener will find extremely useful. I'll mention more about that later in this piece and in further blogs, but lets show you how to culture your own Lactobacillus first.... Step 1 - Rice wash Technically you can use any reasonable carbohydrate source (preferably not simple sugars) but in this instance we'll go with a Rice wash - I will be trying other more exciting things in the future, but until then..... Well the title says it all really, wash some rice and collect the water. This milky wash will now contain some of the starches from the rice and provide a food source for your bacteria. Step 2 - Collect your initial culture Place your rice wash in a suitable vessel (a jar...) and protect the neck with some kind of net to stop anything random getting in. Ideally you'll want to place this outside, in a garden, on a balcony ect away from the elements but open to the air. This will allow the bacteria to go to work on the wash. A day or so should be fine. You will notice a change in the wash as the bacteria start to work, it will start to smell slightly sour and three distinct layers should be visible. You now need to collect the middle of these layers - the best way is with a siphon, but a syringe or whatever you have to hand will work - just try not to disrupt the layers. Step 3 - Feed the LAB Now it's time to culture just the LAB that are present and nothing else. To do this we add milk to the liquid we collected at about 10:1, so for every 10ml of liquid you want to add 100ml of milk - You can use pretty much any milk as it's the LAB in the wash we are culturing, however the least adulterated milk you can get your hands on the better. It's probably worth saying you can't use a lactose free milk for fairly obvious reasons....Finally we want to store this in an anaerobic state, so you have a few options - Ideally you can use a container with an airlock - the same as homebrewers use (or make one), you could use a bottle or jar and release the pressure every so often (not the best plan) or as I have use a heavy lid with a seal so any gas can escape but will then re-seal (not ideal to be honest....go buy some airlocks, you'll want them for further projects!) Step 4 - Prep & Store the LAB After about a week you should notice a distinct change - You'll have a layer of curds and a liquid layer - whey. It's this liquid layer we want. Nothing too stressful here, just use a sieve and collect the liquid in a vessel - The curds can be put on the compost or whatever, it will be a great addition. Again your brew should smell sour (actually quite pleasant if you're in to sour beers at all....) but not rancid, if it is bin it. OK, now you have your liquid you have 2 options, store it in the fridge where it will keep for about a week or mix it with Molasses to stabilise the culture where it will keep for 6 months or more. To stabilise mix the culture 1:1 with molasses, so 1 litre culture to 1 Litre of Molasses gives you 2 Litres.....it's worth airlocking this too until the mix stabilises. What's the point? Excellent question :o) The more mundane uses for LAB include using it as an odour neutraliser if you happen to keep chickens etc - Mix 30ml per litre of water and spray around the coop to reduce the smell - Unblock drains - 15ml per litre and let it go to work over night and many more! For your growing needs however mix 30ml or so with every litre of your plant's water. The microbes will help cycle the nutrients in the soil making them more available to the plant! Add your LAB to compost - 30ml per litre and damp down every time you add to the pile or as you're layering up. The Lactobacillus will speed up decomposition and start to cycle the nutrients! Finally (and more excitingly), I mentioned earlier that LAB is the cornerstone of further processes that are highly beneficial to a gardener. For instance LAB can be used for Bokashi composting, no more need to buy bran for your indoor composting! If you've never heard of Bokashi, I'll cover it at some point. LAB can also be used to ferment plant material, for instance if you already add seaweed meal to your feeding regime, imagine if you could 'pre-digest' the nutrients held within the seaweed - making the non soluble elements readily available at application....with LAB you can. If you're a gardener familiar with the process of rotting comfrey or nettles in a bucket to annoy your plot mates, why not use LAB to break down the vegetable matter without the smell, and more importantly, without the risk of culturing the bad anaerobic bacteria. Using these principles it's basically possible to make your own organic liquid plant food for free and without losing friends or neighbours..... The last point for this post is probably my favourite - With LAB it's possible to create your own fish fertiliser (Fish hydrolysate) this in conjunction with your nettle/seaweed/comfrey/grass brews will give you the perfect base for making your own liquid organic fertiliser.... ...that's not bad for a little milk and help from a bacterium. Foot notes - There should really be a sequence of pictures to go with this post, but frankly they weren't up to scratch. If anything needs clearing up drop me an email or comment below. - N.D

Many of us already know the virtues of worm castings present in your growing medium. They’re especially helpful when we’re growing in an environment where it isn’t practical to naturally encourage the worms in to the rhizosphere – or at least not in the numbers we’d like! Indoor gardening, container gardening and hydroponics would be 3 such examples. Worm castings produced in your own farm or even the bought online if of a high enough quality provide an opportunity to add this beneficial life that the worms leave behind in to the root zone. You can increase the life in the worm castings before you add them! By adding some extra ingredients to the worm castings and setting them aside for a day or so you can multiply the life within this already top notch input. You can also do this before brewing them up in to a compost tea. Supercharging your worm castings is a fairly straightforward process. The three main ingredients are Worm castings – of course, Oatmeal and molasses. Firstly find yourself a source of oatmeal, I prefer to grind my own from oats – this gives me a fine powder that I can mix evenly through the worm castings. This puts a source of food for the fungi contained within the compost throughout the mix as opposed to random sites if you just add oats. It also increases the surface area of the oatmeal overall increasing it’s efficacy. Next the molasses. Make a fairly dilute solution with water at about 500:1 or so and spray on to your castings. Just enough to make them damp. You don’t want pools to occur or to clog up the pores in the castings too much. This will provide a food source for the bacteria – if you’re used to brewing compost teas you may think that this step is unnecessary and you’d be half right – you don’t need to mess with your vermicompost just like you don’t need to add high octane fuel to your car – but if you want to squeeze every last ounce of performance out – it’s worth it. Finally place a secure lid on your mixture and place it in a reasonably warm dark place away from anything that can get at it. I personally add air holes to my pots with cotton wool acting as a breathable membrane. This keeps things aerobic whilst keeping anything unwanted out of the mix. After 3-4 days or however long you’re happy with you should now have a mix with visible fungal mycelia. If you chose not to grind your oats you’ll find this concentrated at the sites of the food source, but if you mixed the powdered meal through it will be all over. You’ll have also kick started other life within the worm castings too! The bacteria will already be an order of magnitude above what it was before and if you place a sample under the microscope you may be surprised to see more nematodes than you are used to if you simply brew your tea with standard vermicompost. All because you gave a kick start to the soil food web, either before you add it back in to the rhizosphere or before you go on to brew it up as a tea. 1. Header shows Macro of fungal mycelia through the worm castings.

How to prevent rose replant disease or what causes soil sickness in rose beds are two common questions, although the problem doesn’t just apply to roses. It can apply to many species and fruit trees in particular. Some rootstocks seem to be more resistant than others but it is a fact that for some plants, including roses, there is a strong possibility that when a plant is replaced the replacement does not fare well. Why? If the original were dead or dying it might be fair to assume that if some form of disease had stricken it the disease would still be present in the soil and ready to attack. However, even when apparently healthy specimens are removed, there is a strong possibility that the replacement will not fare too well. There are a number of theories regarding the reasons and causes, some more credible than others. One strong possibility is that as a rose (or a complete bed of roses) becomes established it becomes colonised with various micro organisms: some ‘good guys’ and some ‘bad guys’. Most, in fact a very large majority, will be the good guys with just a few baddies skulking around and looking out for any opportunities they can. A bit like many animal populations in fact (including humans!) The point is the bad guys aren’t around simply to attack and destroy your plants, they need ‘food’ and if all the ‘food’ has been consumed by the good guys, there is nothing left for them. Take beneficial fungi – mycorrhizae – these ‘feed’ on excess carbohydrates excreted from the plants’ roots, leaving nothing for the non-beneficial, pathogenic species. If you remove a rose, or any other plant from the soil, you are likely to destroy much of the mycorrhizae. When the new plant goes in the pathogens and other bad guys will be waiting. There are a number of things you can do to prevent or at least reduce the likelihood of the problem:- a) Replace the old soil with new. An old gardeners’ trick is to dig out a hole and place a cardboard box big enough to take the new roots or rootball in the hole and plant in the box with new soil. The cardboard will provide a barrier until it is decomposed, by which time the plant should be well established. b) Ensure that a colony of beneficial fungi is established by applying mycorrhizal fungi. A product like TNC MycorrPLUS for example contains mycorrhizae and beneficial bacteria with added natural products to stimulate their growth. Tests have shown that mycorrhizae can make a dramatic difference to root growth1 but it is important that the soil should be rich in organic matter and chemical fertilisers and pesticides should not be used. TNC TricorrP5 contains other species of fungi – trichoderma which which are antagonistic towards pathogenic fungi and have been shown to be beneficial in the control of harmful nematodes c) There is evidence that vermicompost can suppress nematodes2 and other undesirables3. So if you have a supply of vermicompost, it might be worth adding this to the replacement soil. Original article written by Bryan Davenport - August 20, 2013 References: 1. www.luvnpeas.org/edibility/edibleFiles/mycorrhizae.htm 2. Arencon et al, 2003 3. Arencon et al, 2007

Gardeners have been making their own organic liquid plant food for years. Pretty much everybody knows that if you put Comfrey or Nettles in to a bucket with some water and seal the lid you'll get an apocalyptic, plot wars inducing, foul smelling liquid that's more nutritious than farmyard manure (FYM) and comes in an organic liquid form to-boot. Excellent! Well, it is excellent except for the stench, time involved and the fact we're rather limited with our traditional ingredients!! If only there was a better way to make an organic liquid plant food?! Well now there is!* If you ferment your ingredients with a little Lactobacillus (LAB) and sugar you can break down the plant material in to a biologically active, nutritious liquid plant food and the best thing is we're no longer tied to just Comfrey and Nettles! Carrots? Seaweed? Cucumber? Cabbage? Whatever scraps or left overs you have can be fermented down and turned in to a natural 'organic' liquid plant food. What you'll need:- Fruit/Veg/Plant material etc Sugar/Molasses Lactobacillus (LAB) Container with good lid Water (if needed) Scales (Optional) Blender (Optional) Method :- Weigh or guess the amount of plant material you have, if you have access to a blender blitz this up, otherwise just chop and mash up your plant material as best you can. Mix your mash with the same weight of Sugar or Molasses - (Unrefined sugar is best - it has less of the good stuff taken out!), if your material is a little dry (like dry seaweed for example) you can add some water to re-hydrate it. Here I add the Lactobacillus using about 30ml for each kilo of mixture (some don't bother with the LAB here, but I do as it keeps the smell down in my opinion) You're pretty much done now, cap your container loosely. You don't want air getting in, but you don't want it exploding either! After 7-14 days your Fermented Plant Juice will be ready, you may see mold/fungus on the top, so long as it's white and healthy looking that's fine - Discard if Black or angry looking. It should have some odour, but not unpleasant - Sweet/vinegary/slightly alcoholic is fine, if it smells bad, again, discard it. Strain your FPJ and extract as much liquid as possible, you can compost the solids or feed to your worms etc. Bottle up your FPJ and label it properly it should keep for 6-12 months. Use:- Make up an RTU spray by mixing 15-30ml with 1 litre of water and apply as a foliar feed. If feeding the soil you can make it stronger. Other input ideas - Banana, Beetroot, cabbage, carrot, lettuce.......... *if you're new to this - If you follow the Korean Natural Farming method you've been doing it for centuries ;o)