Sunshine Community Gardens

10 December, 2020

www.sunshinecommunitygardens.org

Gardener's Picture page

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Tomatoes in December?

Yup - thanks to Bob Easter

Bob says: "I have some beautiful tomatoes and they just keep coming. The larger tomatoes on the photos I am sending are from a variety called. Tomato Tycoon and of course Celebrities. I love the smaller tomatoes which are larger than cherry. I will try and find the name of that variety. I started these in July but shaded them with 40% shade cloth to prevent the afternoon sun hitting them after 2 PM. They struggled until about Mid September and then started growing. I have harvested enough to share with my across the street neighbor and family.

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Benefits of Compost Tea Brewed at Sunshine

Ila Falvey submits the following info on Compost Tea from GrowNetwork

"Aerobic compost tea is also known as aerobic worm tea, and it is known mostly for its ability to boost microbiological activity in soil by adding beneficial bacteria, fungi, acinomycetes, and protozoa to the soil. It is brewed either by soaking a porous bag full of worm castings in water or by simply dumping the castings into a container of clean, chemical-free water. Molasses, corn syrup, or another microbial food source is then added to the water as a catalyst to stimulate growth of the microbes. And finally, an air-pumping system is installed to create an aerobic (or oxygenated) environment for the multiplying microorganisms.

Aerobic compost tea is beneficial in many ways. The microbes delivered in aerobic compost tea help plants by out-competing anaerobic and other pathogenic organisms within the soil. These beneficial microorganisms can also move in to occupy infected sites on plants' root and leaf surfaces. Brewing aerobic compost tea speeds up the growth rate of microbes such as bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes, and multiplies their numbers exponentially. As a result, this method populates your garden with beneficial microbes more rapidly than applying worm castings alone.

When you spray or pour the tea on the soil, you are not only feeding the plant, but also increasing the number of beneficial microbes in the soil, thus crowding out the bad ones. It has been proven that the tea, along with the castings, can significantly increase plant growth, as well as crop yields, in the short term (a season) and especially in the long term over a period of several seasons.

Along with these great benefits come a boost in the plant's own immune system, enabling it to resist parasites like the infamous aphid, tomato cyst eelworms, and root-knot nematodes. Plants produce certain hormones that insects find distasteful, so they are repelled. Aerobic compost tea also helps a plant to resist diseases such as Pythium and Rhizoctonia.

When either worm tea or the more effective aerobic compost tea is sprayed on leaves and foliage, detrimental and disease-causing microbes are again outnumbered and cannot grow their numbers to dominate any single plant. The teas also aid the plant in creating the "cuticle", a waxy layer on top of the epidermis, or plant skin. This waxy surface protects the leaves from severe elements and reduces attacks by certain harmful microorganisms and insects."

Ila adds: Linda Penington and Ila Falvey will continue to brew it until further notice. The process takes a couple of days. We ask you to remove and place the sign back in the hoophouse (where the tea is) when it is used up and we'll make more. If the sign is not posted, then the tea is NOT ready to be used.

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Butterfly Study at Sunshine

If you are wondering what the orange netting is for - wonder no longer. It is a butterfly house for Zebra butterflies that were released on Sunday. A project is being done to study their response to our climate. They are native to Texas but typically occur much further south. More information will be in the Weeder in a couple of weeks.

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Weeder Content

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