At the moment I am a bit overwhelmed. I live in Vanouver area and it is really not easy to save rain water during Summer because it can go without raining for a few months. Phil, is there any way to measure this to use on a hose end sprayer. Lactic acid bacteria create enzymes and hormones and antibacterial substances and all kinds of good stuff, theyre just really microbes. Will organic yoghurt or kefir (fermented milk) work instead of the milk? Thanks again for the recipe. Will it keep ok mixed in with the dry materials? Let them be and use some of Phils suggestions here. Cant I just mix some active yogurt in my compost to healthy bacteria?? Thank you. It may help. Thanks, Phil. In a sense, thats what organic gardening is all about: keeping the soil alive. And when you say rinse the rice, does that really mean to just pass the waiter over the rice or to soak the rice in the water for a while? I sprayed dormant oil mixed with surphur on all tree trunks. Since my fertilizer is acid base should I dilute the ratio even more. But if the germination problems come later, from disease or biology/chemistry deficiencies, its possible the inoculant could help. It could help a little. Thank you for sharing!! When I add the milk its going to its not going to feed the other ones but its going to feed primarily the lactobacillus. And, of course, any seed that has not been pre-inoculated will have no bacteria for producing nitrogen. UNL web framework and quality assurance provided by the, Apply to the University of NebraskaLincoln, Give to the University of NebraskaLincoln, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Strengthening Nebraska's Agricultural Economy, Using Rhizobium Inoculants For Legumes. Id be interested to try it actually. Lacto bacterias are said to be the ,work horse in EM. No tilling. Worked great. I do it once/month. When the seeds come up, pull the chips together as a mulch. Do not cultivate the soil. Thank you for helping the amateur gardener. Acidic soil can cut down on the inoculants effectiveness. Really, where do people come up with this baloney? Maintain your chip application by adding on top. There are overgrown ivy and blackberry canes at the back of the property. What I want to show you today is something else that Ive done a few times just for fun mainly, is to culture my own lactobacillus which is a very important group of bacteria that do a lot of good things in the soil. Again, I should mention that EM contains Lactobacillus along with other beneficial microbes, and is certainly more effective than using a culture with only Lactobacillus, but still, if you dont have EM, its definitely worthwhile using this one. That's because Rhizobium are living bacteria. So really, youre diverting this about one to twelve-hundred parts water, or, I guess simple would be a little less than a teaspoon in a gallon of water. (When I learned about it this, I was taught to mix it with 20 parts water first, but then that gets mixed with about 60 parts water, so that would mean 1200 parts water total I just round down to 1000, as this is far from an exact science). Many soils do not normally have enough of these Rhizobium to form nodules naturally. My question is: Wouldnt the water come out be tap water which is chlorinated? Im now wondering if I can inoculate seeds with diluted whey from yogurt/ home made kefir, live sauerkraut juice or even the liquid that rises to the top of sourdough starter.. though the latter does contain yeasts and apparently alcohol.. Im a big fan of both. Nicely done, and thank you for helping others to improve their own smaller parts of our world, but theres a few things we should all think about: I had been culturing various aerobic bacteria, until I realized that identifying every specific strain wasnt feasible (now cycling continually, and sterilizing occasionally). Of course when I plant I will add the mychor.
And this is what I want. Phil you do it just for fun?! I dont do anything different just use all of my usual inoculants and fertilizers. And, our world sure needs 'em.
Do you know of one or can you direct me to a (free) on-line source for one? It may have some use as a fertilizer, but its not an inoculant. Pre-inoculation attaches them to seeds during winter for spring planting. Thank you for your answer. Sophie. I prefer organic whole milk, but any kind will do. Not sure its a good idea to advise people to take virgin forest soil. Thank you for sharing. I havent found good data on this. Legumes make their own nitrogen by forming root nodules with bacteria call Rhizobium. 
I will try it and let you know if it works. But on than than, the maggots/flies should be kept in check fairly quickly once spread into the garden, provided you have a reasonably diverse ecosystem. After the first couple/few days, its a good idea to burp it by unscrewing the lid and screwing it back on, in case any gases are building up. The symbiotic relationship the Rhizobium bacteria has with your legume crops brings more nourishment to your pea and bean plants, witnessed by thick, rapid growth. To be sure your legumes produce nitrogen, add Rhizobium bacteria to your seed. His method of controlling bugs is brilliant. Yes, any of those could be helpful, especially those where lactic acid bacteria are dominant theyre especially good for soil and plant health just as they are for us. And I dont drink milk, so I dont have it around usually. But if I had my own cows, I would definitely experiment with this. Before we get into products that you can purchase to bring into the garden that are microbial inoculants I wanted to talk briefly about how we can culture our own micro-organisms. I have a large yard and mixing by the gallon would take forever. Milk is not a fermentation, so doesnt contain much in the way of lactobacillus. That would be 3 Tbsp of grain and 450mL of milk less than $1 worth of materials. Works with any feeding programand increases plant biomass and yield by 300%. Bruce Anderson My compost bin could use some of this now, as its filled to the brim. Improve the structure of the soil so it has the right amount of air spaces, water spaces, nutrient availability, pH, etc. It will also be useful for its great for kids but its also good if you dont want to bring in too many external inputs but you want to do something beneficial for the garden this is useful. What Im going to do is just take not too much. Can I mix those with filtered water, some molasses or sugar, lt sit for a few days then apply the whole thing to a lwan in need of care? Just a guess, though Ive never grown okra in the tropics . Whereas this is just mainly the lactobacillus. Is this just a more cost effective method ? Yes, you can use this for bokashi. Ive heard LAB called the work horse of EM, but its the photosynthetic bacteria that are generally considered the most important part.
How is this lactobacillus treatment you outline above different from diluting milk 1 part to 10 (total) parts and spraying that on? He starts it up and applies electricity for 15 seconds or so. Can I add the inoculant after planting the seeds? 1. Contains live bacteria that are essential in the nitrogen fixating process of legumes. To plant your garden, make deep rows down to the soil level, plant your seeds or plants in the soil. I spray on all leaves of all plants! Obviously, if youre a vegan you cant use milk. Sophie, Hi Phil, I have a question to ask you: whenever peach trees contacted rain, they will have leaf curl which is some kind of fungus disease. And Im just rinsing it, getting all that, you know when you rinse rice it gets to be a nice murky water and I guess thats kind of a going to be a substrate for microbes to grow on also maybe there will be some microbes in there, on the rice, too. But yes, straight LAB cultures can certainly be helpful, as can BIM. You can add up to an equal amount of unsulfured molasses or sugar to keep the bacteria fed, which apparently allows it to be stored out of the fridge, but I just keep it in the fridge. Not only will it help deliverRhizobium bacteria to your plants it will carry other types of beneficial bacterial and living matter, like mycorrhizae fungi, that enable plants to improve their uptake of nutrients and water. All the activity happens at the point of contact between soil, grass and chips. And you know, in the past what Ive done is Ive actually used that, that one to twenty ratio, but I think what youre supposed to do is take that and further dilute it one to sixty if Im understanding it correctly. Yes, no problem at all, Terra. Is this another example of a large (probably polluting) company buying up a smaller company with organic technologies in order to bury them? That is what I want to do. Hi Phil Im starting a garden from scratch. Yogurt, on the other hand, would probably bring some benefits. I used sugar to feed it instead of molasses which seemed to be ok. It happens instantly when you stir it in. 1/2 cup of inoculant with 1 1/2 cups of water), then set your sprayer to 1 Tbsp per gallon of water, youll have a 1:1000 ratio. Ya, if you mix the inoculant with 3 parts water and put that mixture into the hose-end sprayer (e.g. The other thing you can do to encourage beneficial bacteria is to make sure theres a lot of organic material in your soil. It keep congealing even after I put it in the fridge. And yet, even more important is how the lactic acid species and yeast and photosynthetic species work together. Or use it for something? This will not work. I used the rinse water from some whole grain brown rice noodles. I learned this process from Gil Carandang of Herbana Farms in the Philippines. Just again with a loose lid. Our favorite is to spread inoculant on an old dinner plate and, after soaking the seeds, rolling them in the inoculant. And thats a great way to bring in a different set of microbes. Holler back, and Ill try n play matchmaker for your seed. Earthworms existed in North America wherever the Ice Age glaciers did not advance. Thats what I want to try and pour. Those years we forgot to order or otherwise just didnt have inoculant enough to go around have shown us the difference. Initially, it seems the Inoculation tricks learned from this site may be helpful for stimulating plant growth, fixing Nitrogen, protecting from diseases. Bob the anti-Slug had a good comment about Canadian regulations; A few things are available up here like Harpin and EM. Fungi to the roots of my plants but wasnt sure about the liquids. Hi Melissa, yes, its nice to do your first spray on top of the soil while youre doing this or at some point within a few weeks before planting. I fermented my fruits to use as fertilizer and I hope that I can mix this with my fertilizer for my garden. Will winter affect my okra plants. I would try it on one plant first, but yes, I imagine its okay for all plants. I am assuming, Phil, that you meant to say dump it into your compost bin/pile when it smells bad. He applies 4-6 wood chips right on the grass, which utilizes the green grass for nitrogen to break down the wood chips by contact; and at the same time it kills the grass on the spot. They got specific bacteria in a packet you can use. Note that pruning doesnt generally get rid of insect pests its done to increase fruit production and quality.As for the soil, youll find lots of info on this site about how to improve that be sure to sign up for my free ebook download if you havent already . Certainly, although I dont know how much. This means compost. Infect wash at different places and you get many.
As for how much, I must say I have no idea, but certainly worth a try.
These microbes are often deficient for various reasons, but if we can get more of them back in there, they: Plus theres a whole list of other services they provide for plants and soil. Now that were well into pea planting season and bean planting isnt far behind, weve been considering the practice of inoculating pea and bean seeds with nodule-forming, nitrogen-fixing Rhizobium bacteria, commonly known as legume inoculant. Im so excited to give biological gardening a go. Im not sure about whipping cream, Sophie. One way is to use more legumes - like alfalfa for hay and clovers or alfalfa in grass pastures. I would only feed it once with molasses, and Im not sure how long it will stay okay. So why would we destroy forests just to benefit our gardens? And then what Im going to do is strain that into another container into this container here and Im just going to put it into a maximum of fifty percent full. I dont know I have about a quarter cup of rice here and Im going to rinse it in a little bit of water. For that you need an actual pea inoculant. Folks that dont wish to eat the products from animals can still use them, just as those of us that choose to avoid eating pork could raise pigs. As for the pH of your fertilizer, a little bit acid is actually a good thing. So now I just have that. This sounds like a great recipe. I found some nice black dirt under my deck, I will throw some of that in too, and see what happens. He feeds his abundant produce to his chickens and harvests their poop to fertilize the garden and keep the process cycling. Ive already made the innoculant but am not sure if it will work. I was wondering if you could make a spray with water and a lactobacillius mixture from a probiotic capsule. Amixture of beneficial fungi that are well suited to a wide variety of soils and plants. I suppose it depends on the temperature. And yes, there definitely was extant fertile soil in North America, Nadia. The exact amount doesnt seem to matter, though, so just try to approximate regular milk. So what Im going to do here its a couple of weeks it takes but theres not much. Which seeds do you soak in this? And my family none of us drink milk anymore so I had to go borrow some but what you probably want to do is put it in a bigger container. I dont tend to do it that often because they are in the product effective micro-organisms along with another group, another couple of groups of microbes that are really important, really beneficial when you get them altogether. Is that enough or do i have to put something else in my plants. Just yesterday I was listening to a youtube by Paul Gautschi, Back to Eden Gardening. You would enjoy listening to his teories, I think. Can you suggest an amount of sugar and of water please? If you intend to buy inoculant in bulk for acreage size planting, make sure you dont get theRhizobiuminoculant for alfalfa or some other nitrogen-fixing plant. The grain can be used elsewhere but isnt needed anymore for this process. Reason is there are many hundreds of species of bacteria out of which only one works with peas, legumes, etc., It will not hurt you to try, but it is a waste of time. 1. Keep up the good work! I use the milk and water mix to deter/eradicate fungus on the leaves of a lot of my plants. Separate this fluid into another container. If I chose to store the inoculant outside then how long or often should I feed it with molasses ? Some of the microbes wont love it, but many will be okay. This time, its better to keep air out of the process, so put a lid on tight. I havent used kombucha in the garden. You can also take virgin soil from forest or undisturbed area and add it to culture. Im not sure how long theyll live but after a couple of days the usefulness will drop off quite a bit. Seems awfully selfish. I wanted to get my peas in the ground during the best moon dates according to the Farmers Almanac and my local stores did not have anything in stock yet. Can l spray lalactobacillus-serum on the leaves to prevent leaf Curls? And Ill show you. Thank you very much for your time and expertise! 2. I wonder if you have any advice for me as I am renting this home with permission to garden. But perhaps youd prefer to make your own inoculant, maybe to save money or to be more sustainable or because you just think it would be cool, man. If this seed is held over for planting later, many of these bacteria may die due to heat during storage or the length of time between attachment and planting. Nitrogen fertilizer is expensive and using other means to add nitrogen to the soil can be cost effective. North america soils were very infertile and it is through Europeans farm animals that soil worms were reintroduced. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); weed, pest, and disease-suppressive biological agents. It just seems like a lot of material for what is used individually.
But after you get going your soil will become better and better, and with much less effort. Now we dont want to be bringing in wheelbarrows full of soil from other ecosystems, but just a little bit is a great idea. I learned a lot from your post about planning your landscape. Keep the container at room temperature out of the sun for 2-7 days the colder the temperature, the longer it takes. Hi, C.J., and thanks again to Phil for maintaining a good resource for all. I just would like your ideas on what comes first what next. Heres an in-depth look at the use of various soil inoculants from The Ohio State University Extension Service (PDF) that also deals with the relationship between soil amendments and beneficial bacteria and fungi. This lesson was more about making a very affordable liquid inoculant to spray on plant leaves. Really, your just using the fermented whey, right? Now what Im going to do is loosely cover it up, make sure some air can get in there and leave it at room temperature for about a week and then well see what happens next. Heres a more thorough article: https://www.unconventionalfarmsupply.com/lactobacillus-serum. Hello. One reason growers plant legumes like clovers and alfalfa is because the plantsproduce their own nitrogen at least usually they do. a/2 cup of inoculant with 11/2 c water, then set the sprayer to 1 tablespoon per gallon of water we will have 1:1000 ratio. There that worked pretty well to strain that out. Hi Phil, Thank you very much for your advice. You need the legume inoculant. Can what you made be put into a pond filter to produce benificial bacteria to help keep the pond clean and balanced ? Now Im just speculating here but I have done plenty of fermenting and what you have there for inoculant sounds like whey? Yes, you certainly can spray the leaves with the serum. If you dig up a legume plant, these nodules are the small, pinkish clusters of lumpy growths on the roots. Hopefully you get a chance to do this just as a, if not just as an interesting experiment but also a very, very inexpensive way to put some of the most important micro-organisms out there into your garden. In terms of using it, what I would do is I would take my lactobacillus or my lactobacillus/molasses mixture and put it into twenty parts water when Im ready to use it. Thanks Phil. I havent seen it done, and Im not sure what the exact recipe would be, but it makes sense in theory. Theres no right way to apply the inoculant to the seeds. It is poor soil and has not been cared for in about 8 years. There are fruit trees (apple, plum and pear) that are in desperate need of pruning and are infected by bugs. After diluting in water what is the shelf life? It will store in the fridge for a year or more. Sophie. Im guessing cows milk is best for this. Those small packages at the garden center can be pretty pricey. It is possible to use too much, although Im not sure how much that would be. Sorry I missed this earlier, Sophie. Thanks. Ive never seen an application rate, so I just spray my plants until the leaves are dripping.
And this is what I want. Phil you do it just for fun?! I dont do anything different just use all of my usual inoculants and fertilizers. And, our world sure needs 'em.
Do you know of one or can you direct me to a (free) on-line source for one? It may have some use as a fertilizer, but its not an inoculant. Pre-inoculation attaches them to seeds during winter for spring planting. Thank you for your answer. Sophie. I prefer organic whole milk, but any kind will do. Not sure its a good idea to advise people to take virgin forest soil. Thank you for sharing. I havent found good data on this. Legumes make their own nitrogen by forming root nodules with bacteria call Rhizobium. I will try it and let you know if it works. But on than than, the maggots/flies should be kept in check fairly quickly once spread into the garden, provided you have a reasonably diverse ecosystem. After the first couple/few days, its a good idea to burp it by unscrewing the lid and screwing it back on, in case any gases are building up. The symbiotic relationship the Rhizobium bacteria has with your legume crops brings more nourishment to your pea and bean plants, witnessed by thick, rapid growth. To be sure your legumes produce nitrogen, add Rhizobium bacteria to your seed. His method of controlling bugs is brilliant. Yes, any of those could be helpful, especially those where lactic acid bacteria are dominant theyre especially good for soil and plant health just as they are for us. And I dont drink milk, so I dont have it around usually. But if I had my own cows, I would definitely experiment with this. Before we get into products that you can purchase to bring into the garden that are microbial inoculants I wanted to talk briefly about how we can culture our own micro-organisms. I have a large yard and mixing by the gallon would take forever. Milk is not a fermentation, so doesnt contain much in the way of lactobacillus. That would be 3 Tbsp of grain and 450mL of milk less than $1 worth of materials. Works with any feeding programand increases plant biomass and yield by 300%. Bruce Anderson My compost bin could use some of this now, as its filled to the brim. Improve the structure of the soil so it has the right amount of air spaces, water spaces, nutrient availability, pH, etc. It will also be useful for its great for kids but its also good if you dont want to bring in too many external inputs but you want to do something beneficial for the garden this is useful. What Im going to do is just take not too much. Can I mix those with filtered water, some molasses or sugar, lt sit for a few days then apply the whole thing to a lwan in need of care? Just a guess, though Ive never grown okra in the tropics . Whereas this is just mainly the lactobacillus. Is this just a more cost effective method ? Yes, you can use this for bokashi. Ive heard LAB called the work horse of EM, but its the photosynthetic bacteria that are generally considered the most important part. How is this lactobacillus treatment you outline above different from diluting milk 1 part to 10 (total) parts and spraying that on? He starts it up and applies electricity for 15 seconds or so. Can I add the inoculant after planting the seeds? 1. Contains live bacteria that are essential in the nitrogen fixating process of legumes. To plant your garden, make deep rows down to the soil level, plant your seeds or plants in the soil. I spray on all leaves of all plants! Obviously, if youre a vegan you cant use milk. Sophie, Hi Phil, I have a question to ask you: whenever peach trees contacted rain, they will have leaf curl which is some kind of fungus disease. And Im just rinsing it, getting all that, you know when you rinse rice it gets to be a nice murky water and I guess thats kind of a going to be a substrate for microbes to grow on also maybe there will be some microbes in there, on the rice, too. But yes, straight LAB cultures can certainly be helpful, as can BIM. You can add up to an equal amount of unsulfured molasses or sugar to keep the bacteria fed, which apparently allows it to be stored out of the fridge, but I just keep it in the fridge. Not only will it help deliverRhizobium bacteria to your plants it will carry other types of beneficial bacterial and living matter, like mycorrhizae fungi, that enable plants to improve their uptake of nutrients and water. All the activity happens at the point of contact between soil, grass and chips. And you know, in the past what Ive done is Ive actually used that, that one to twenty ratio, but I think what youre supposed to do is take that and further dilute it one to sixty if Im understanding it correctly. Yes, no problem at all, Terra. Is this another example of a large (probably polluting) company buying up a smaller company with organic technologies in order to bury them? That is what I want to do. Hi Phil Im starting a garden from scratch. Yogurt, on the other hand, would probably bring some benefits. I used sugar to feed it instead of molasses which seemed to be ok. It happens instantly when you stir it in. 1/2 cup of inoculant with 1 1/2 cups of water), then set your sprayer to 1 Tbsp per gallon of water, youll have a 1:1000 ratio. Ya, if you mix the inoculant with 3 parts water and put that mixture into the hose-end sprayer (e.g. The other thing you can do to encourage beneficial bacteria is to make sure theres a lot of organic material in your soil. It keep congealing even after I put it in the fridge. And yet, even more important is how the lactic acid species and yeast and photosynthetic species work together. Or use it for something? This will not work. I used the rinse water from some whole grain brown rice noodles. I learned this process from Gil Carandang of Herbana Farms in the Philippines. Just again with a loose lid. Our favorite is to spread inoculant on an old dinner plate and, after soaking the seeds, rolling them in the inoculant. And thats a great way to bring in a different set of microbes. Holler back, and Ill try n play matchmaker for your seed. Earthworms existed in North America wherever the Ice Age glaciers did not advance. Thats what I want to try and pour. Those years we forgot to order or otherwise just didnt have inoculant enough to go around have shown us the difference. Initially, it seems the Inoculation tricks learned from this site may be helpful for stimulating plant growth, fixing Nitrogen, protecting from diseases. Bob the anti-Slug had a good comment about Canadian regulations; A few things are available up here like Harpin and EM. Fungi to the roots of my plants but wasnt sure about the liquids. Hi Melissa, yes, its nice to do your first spray on top of the soil while youre doing this or at some point within a few weeks before planting. I fermented my fruits to use as fertilizer and I hope that I can mix this with my fertilizer for my garden. Will winter affect my okra plants. I would try it on one plant first, but yes, I imagine its okay for all plants. I am assuming, Phil, that you meant to say dump it into your compost bin/pile when it smells bad. He applies 4-6 wood chips right on the grass, which utilizes the green grass for nitrogen to break down the wood chips by contact; and at the same time it kills the grass on the spot. They got specific bacteria in a packet you can use. Note that pruning doesnt generally get rid of insect pests its done to increase fruit production and quality.As for the soil, youll find lots of info on this site about how to improve that be sure to sign up for my free ebook download if you havent already . Certainly, although I dont know how much. This means compost. Infect wash at different places and you get many.
As for how much, I must say I have no idea, but certainly worth a try.
These microbes are often deficient for various reasons, but if we can get more of them back in there, they: Plus theres a whole list of other services they provide for plants and soil. Now that were well into pea planting season and bean planting isnt far behind, weve been considering the practice of inoculating pea and bean seeds with nodule-forming, nitrogen-fixing Rhizobium bacteria, commonly known as legume inoculant. Im so excited to give biological gardening a go. Im not sure about whipping cream, Sophie. One way is to use more legumes - like alfalfa for hay and clovers or alfalfa in grass pastures. I would only feed it once with molasses, and Im not sure how long it will stay okay. So why would we destroy forests just to benefit our gardens? And then what Im going to do is strain that into another container into this container here and Im just going to put it into a maximum of fifty percent full. I dont know I have about a quarter cup of rice here and Im going to rinse it in a little bit of water. For that you need an actual pea inoculant. Folks that dont wish to eat the products from animals can still use them, just as those of us that choose to avoid eating pork could raise pigs. As for the pH of your fertilizer, a little bit acid is actually a good thing. So now I just have that. This sounds like a great recipe. I found some nice black dirt under my deck, I will throw some of that in too, and see what happens. He feeds his abundant produce to his chickens and harvests their poop to fertilize the garden and keep the process cycling. Ive already made the innoculant but am not sure if it will work. I was wondering if you could make a spray with water and a lactobacillius mixture from a probiotic capsule. Amixture of beneficial fungi that are well suited to a wide variety of soils and plants. I suppose it depends on the temperature. And yes, there definitely was extant fertile soil in North America, Nadia. The exact amount doesnt seem to matter, though, so just try to approximate regular milk. So what Im going to do here its a couple of weeks it takes but theres not much. Which seeds do you soak in this? And my family none of us drink milk anymore so I had to go borrow some but what you probably want to do is put it in a bigger container. I dont tend to do it that often because they are in the product effective micro-organisms along with another group, another couple of groups of microbes that are really important, really beneficial when you get them altogether. Is that enough or do i have to put something else in my plants. Just yesterday I was listening to a youtube by Paul Gautschi, Back to Eden Gardening. You would enjoy listening to his teories, I think. Can you suggest an amount of sugar and of water please? If you intend to buy inoculant in bulk for acreage size planting, make sure you dont get theRhizobiuminoculant for alfalfa or some other nitrogen-fixing plant. The grain can be used elsewhere but isnt needed anymore for this process. Reason is there are many hundreds of species of bacteria out of which only one works with peas, legumes, etc., It will not hurt you to try, but it is a waste of time. 1. Keep up the good work! I use the milk and water mix to deter/eradicate fungus on the leaves of a lot of my plants. Separate this fluid into another container. If I chose to store the inoculant outside then how long or often should I feed it with molasses ? Some of the microbes wont love it, but many will be okay. This time, its better to keep air out of the process, so put a lid on tight. I havent used kombucha in the garden. You can also take virgin soil from forest or undisturbed area and add it to culture. Im not sure how long theyll live but after a couple of days the usefulness will drop off quite a bit. Seems awfully selfish. I wanted to get my peas in the ground during the best moon dates according to the Farmers Almanac and my local stores did not have anything in stock yet. Can l spray lalactobacillus-serum on the leaves to prevent leaf Curls? And Ill show you. Thank you very much for your time and expertise! 2. I wonder if you have any advice for me as I am renting this home with permission to garden. But perhaps youd prefer to make your own inoculant, maybe to save money or to be more sustainable or because you just think it would be cool, man. If this seed is held over for planting later, many of these bacteria may die due to heat during storage or the length of time between attachment and planting. Nitrogen fertilizer is expensive and using other means to add nitrogen to the soil can be cost effective. North america soils were very infertile and it is through Europeans farm animals that soil worms were reintroduced. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); weed, pest, and disease-suppressive biological agents. It just seems like a lot of material for what is used individually.
But after you get going your soil will become better and better, and with much less effort. Now we dont want to be bringing in wheelbarrows full of soil from other ecosystems, but just a little bit is a great idea. I learned a lot from your post about planning your landscape. Keep the container at room temperature out of the sun for 2-7 days the colder the temperature, the longer it takes. Hi, C.J., and thanks again to Phil for maintaining a good resource for all. I just would like your ideas on what comes first what next. Heres an in-depth look at the use of various soil inoculants from The Ohio State University Extension Service (PDF) that also deals with the relationship between soil amendments and beneficial bacteria and fungi. This lesson was more about making a very affordable liquid inoculant to spray on plant leaves. Really, your just using the fermented whey, right? Now what Im going to do is loosely cover it up, make sure some air can get in there and leave it at room temperature for about a week and then well see what happens next. Heres a more thorough article: https://www.unconventionalfarmsupply.com/lactobacillus-serum. Hello. One reason growers plant legumes like clovers and alfalfa is because the plantsproduce their own nitrogen at least usually they do. a/2 cup of inoculant with 11/2 c water, then set the sprayer to 1 tablespoon per gallon of water we will have 1:1000 ratio. There that worked pretty well to strain that out. Hi Phil, Thank you very much for your advice. You need the legume inoculant. Can what you made be put into a pond filter to produce benificial bacteria to help keep the pond clean and balanced ? Now Im just speculating here but I have done plenty of fermenting and what you have there for inoculant sounds like whey? Yes, you certainly can spray the leaves with the serum. If you dig up a legume plant, these nodules are the small, pinkish clusters of lumpy growths on the roots. Hopefully you get a chance to do this just as a, if not just as an interesting experiment but also a very, very inexpensive way to put some of the most important micro-organisms out there into your garden. In terms of using it, what I would do is I would take my lactobacillus or my lactobacillus/molasses mixture and put it into twenty parts water when Im ready to use it. Thanks Phil. I havent seen it done, and Im not sure what the exact recipe would be, but it makes sense in theory. Theres no right way to apply the inoculant to the seeds. It is poor soil and has not been cared for in about 8 years. There are fruit trees (apple, plum and pear) that are in desperate need of pruning and are infected by bugs. After diluting in water what is the shelf life? It will store in the fridge for a year or more. Sophie. Im guessing cows milk is best for this. Those small packages at the garden center can be pretty pricey. It is possible to use too much, although Im not sure how much that would be. Sorry I missed this earlier, Sophie. Thanks. Ive never seen an application rate, so I just spray my plants until the leaves are dripping.