[compost_tea] Re: Treatment for pests in Carpathian Walnuts

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 13:52:27 -0500

I've gotten a couple e-mails like this one, so I think I'll send this to the group, in hopes that folks will give this to others that need help on working out the program.

> Elaine, thank you for your earlier response to several questions. I lost some of the information that I really need. I have insect problems in my walnut plantings: Butternut curculio, husk maggots, and maybe apple maggots. I believe you mentioned the use of some bacteria, fungi, nemitode, etc. as a soil treatment to interrupt the life cycle. Can you help me with that information again, please. Any suggestions on organic sprays to help protect the crop from adult insects would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks! Keep up the good work!
>

> Hi Norman -
>
Last fall, you needed to get the beneficial organisms that consume the over-wintering forms of the pests you asked about back into your litter material and into your soil. You want to leave the litter on the soil in the fall, not rake it up, or burn it or something like that. Litter, or leaf debris from your trees, is supposed to remain on the soil. The dead leaves are food to feed the beneficial fungi and bacteria, which you need to form structure in the soil (so roots can grow down to the depth they are meant to grow down to, not be arrested by anaerobic conditions that develop as a result of compaction at 12 to 18 inches).
 
You also then need to inoculate the right aerobic biology to process nutrients and return them to your plants at the rate, time and form the plant requires.
 
You need the beneficial organisms to combat disease-causing organisms in the soil, and on that leaf litter. If the good guys are not present, then the bad guys rule. And you have the pests and pathogens you asked about reigning supreme.
 
So, you have to get the good guys back. The good guys DO NOT return fast enough on their own. You CANNOT assay for the good guys by using plate counts or microbial biomass as assessed by chloroform fumigation. Do not be mis-lead by "soils" people that try to use these methods of assessment to negate a true understanding of what is going on in soil, and with soil life.

The papers presented at the Soils meetings this last fall were laughable. They concluded that soil life doesn't change when you plow, or when you add an incoulum of organisms. But they used methods that couldn't possibly tell them about these things. I just shake my head when someone uses chloroform fumigation to assess microbial biomass in soil. They are measuring soil organic matter, and really, not much else. I think plate methods are idiotic for trying to assess species diversity of bacteria or fungi, imagine what I think about something that tries to make statements about biology based on the CO2 being produced from the microbial biomass killed by the chloroform. Especially since the fungal hyphae are usually not even touched by the organism that survive fumigation - and thus the fungal biomass is almost completely ignored by this particular method.
 
Anyway, back to the point.
 
So you didn't get compost or compost tea, or an inoculum of bacterial beneficials on the litter last fall? Or maybe you have tried tea, but it "didn't work". Well, you didn't get enough on, the tea wasn't good quality - didn't have the proper biology to displace the disease organisms or begin the process of decomposition - or you have toxic chemicals in the soil that killed the added biology.
 
In any case, the presence of the diseases tell you that you DON'T have the proper biology present to protect the trees.

So, start this spring ASAP. As soon as the ground temperature is about 45 F, apply about 20 gal/ac of good tea to the litter and the soil. If it's really good tea, you can put 15 gal/ac. There is some benefit in testing the tea then, to know what amount you need to put on....

And it would be good to know where you are starting from, in the soil, to know if addition of the tea or compost improved anything, and whether you have a toxic chemical present in your soil that has to get dealt with before you can get the biology to do their improvements for the soil and your plants.
 
So, apply 15 to 20 gal/ac to the soil. Then, check the VAM colonization of the roots of your plants. If you need to improve the mycorrhizal colonization of hte roots, do some under-cutting of weeds, but also inject tea with VAM spores in it. You get the weeds and help the trees at the same time.
 
Plant a fungal-dominated over-story crop plant - like strawberry, or thyme, or lavender (a SHORT cultivar, from seed, not bunches, please), or marjoram, or some other native perennial herb (get Kirk to help you choose a good native).
 
About the time bud swell occurs, you want to do a foliar tea spray, at about 5 gallons per ac for each 6 foot height of tree. If the trees are really bushy and wide, then adjust appropriately.
 
When budbreak occurs, you want to get out with a second application of tea. If there is no disease early in the psring, you can wait another month to spray. When disease "season" comes upon you (listen to the Extension folks, they'll tell you when the diseases start blooming, or the pests start to take off), then you need to spray every week if diseases or pests are bad. Every two weeks through a disease season, if the disease is present but not too bad. If you have perfect conditions for disease, then you may need to double up sprays, and do twice a week for a week or so.
 
We have a paper coming out on the work we did with JUST foliar sprays in vineyards. We didn't do anything about the disease inoculum in the soil in that study, and so we didn't get full protection. The study proved that you need to do something about the disease in the orchard soil. Don't listen to the people who want to claim that the study shows that compost tea doesn't work. Sigh. Foliar applications of tea can only do so much. That's what the study was about. Could just foliar sprays deal with the problems? The answer is no, you have to do the soil drenches as well.
 
Anyway, in succeeding years, if you stop chemical spraying (and that includes herbicides - no more Round-Up!), then you maintain and improve soil life. Weeds exit the system, because you get rid of the excess nitrate that helps so many of the weed species germinate and out-compete the crop you are trying to grow.
 
But remember, nature abhors bare soil, and Mother Nature will send weeds into a place that you are disturbing. Tillage and use of toxic chemicals kills the organisms that help trees grow, so the less tillage and toxic chemcials you use, the less weed you have. But you have to avoid bare soil. Plant that perennial cover-crop under the trees. Grass in the driving row.
 
For more infomration on the details of these intereactions, more how and why and mechanism for why these things work, please come take a SFI course.
 
We have a course in San Mateo the end of January. Please see our web site (www.soilfoodweb.com) for details. Or come to ACRES next year. Arden Anderson and I will be doing a 3 day course on intergrating soil chemistry and soil biology into one smooth program that will solve both soil chemistry and soil biology problems without harming the biology.
 
Or at least, we'll get you thinking about how to do it. We might not have the perfect system for you, in Michigan, figured out yet. But it will be the cutting edge course on this new approach in agriculture.
 
The best part is, this Biological Agriculture works. It is less expensive, getting you back to using your own resources to make your orchard productive. Doesn't mean you throw out the pesticides (copper sulfate is a pesticide, but it is allowed on organic farms). Sometimes plagues happen, and then you need the toxics. But if you use a toxic chemcial you have to then use compost or compost tea to put back the beneficial biology you just killed. And you have to then give them time to recover and get back to work.
 
Sort of like recovering from Christmas, and now trying to get back to work. I don't wanna!
 
Feel free to ask more questions if this isn't clear. Or find an SFI advisor near you to help you with the details. The advisors are listed on the SFI website - www.soilfoodweb.com

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com

 

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Received on Tue Dec 30 2003 - 17:31:24 EST

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