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Organic Plant Nutrition – Liquid Forms
- AACT (Actively Aerated Compost Tea)
- Compost Tea Slurries
- Sea Mineral Solutions
- Custom Blends
AACT
Using a 5 stage purification to rid our city water of unwanted chlorine and chloramine, we have a pure medium to start with.
We add premium composts and plant nutrients to the water which is then aerated for 12 to 36 hours. The bubbling creates oxygen which acts as food to help the microbes multiply.
The finished product is then used straight or diluted on the soil and plant foliage to boost immunity and improve plant growth regulators.
Compost Tea Slurries
The bottom of the barrel sediment liquid is useful too. Perhaps not as a foliar spray as the sediment clogs the spray tips and tubes, but rather as a probiotic catalyst for bigger plants, transplanting time and to feed the soil in general, ie spring and fall or just before seeding a new timeline.
Sea Mineral Solutions
We started using these in 2007 as an additive to our AACT’s. In 2008 and 2009 we used them as stand alone applications as city water can be used to dilute the mineral concentrate. The blends we used have been partially de-salinated, however, caution is recommended to not overuse. Not as potent or repeatedly useable as AACT, it is however way easier and cheaper to make.
Custom Blends
Often times we add in organic insecticides to our blends depending on the garden need. We add in insecticidal soap, mineral oil, neem oil, nematodes, citrus oil, home made blends as well as EM or effective micro-organisms on a case by case basis.
We offer corrective and preventative application programs based on your gardens needs.
Corrective organic plant nutrition applications are often a combination of organic liquid sprays, slurries and top dressings. They may be applied or several times over season or several years, until plant soil health has reached it’s own self-regulating symbiosis.
Preventative organic plant nutrition applications are usually foliar sprays that are applied 3 to 7 times per year on to plant foliage and soil. Micro-organisms are regularily re-introduced to optimize plant soil symmetry.
Long term health is achieved only upon implementation of a self sufficient closed loop nutrient cycling system.
What does this mean?
Recycling of plant residues, food waste, grey water and rain water as well as installation and maintenance of complementary companion plant guilds, all so to create and maintain the ideal amount of soil micro-organisms: worms, fungi, bacteria, etc.
Until that point all inputs although organic are externally sourced and thus not of a closed loop nature.
Each geographical locale at any given time boasts its list of surplus resources. These are often traded out so that those with a lack of same resources don’t have to go without.
Currently, I have access to an excess of locally recycled organic top dressing, made right in Toronto. I install 100′s of cubic yards of this nutrient rich soil every year. However, one day this may change, and I may have to look elsewhere for my supply.
I’m planning ahead a little and offering installation and maintenance of composters, etc to re-orient the soil nutrient issue to an internally created, on site approach.
I encourage my long term clients to think along these gradations of “green” and “organic” so that every season we may work further towards reaching this noble goal.
