Beware: Cheap Cow Manure May Have More in It

After taking home the two and half bags of cheap cow manure fertilizer from UPLB, we immediately unloaded them and readied one of the sacks to be used on the next day.

The soil of one of the wall-mounted garden pots seem to have shrunk over time. The roots of the Mandevilla vines in the garden pot were already showing. So I thought this would be the best time to apply the newly purchased cow manure.

Dispensing Spoon for Garden Chemicals - DIY

At one point in our gardening lives, we eventually may need to use garden chemicals. And there are many.

There are pesticides (insecticides, fungicides), herbicides (weedkillers) and all kinds of fertilizers. These garden chemicals, oftentimes inorganic, are typically in powdered form.

Cheap Cow Manure Direct from the Cow Pen

Every time we visit our daughter's university campus at UPLB, we always try to maximize our trip. Being avid gardeners, we would pick up free cow manure from the Animal Husbandry to be used as organic fertilizer.

We shoveled cow manure in a covered cow stable. Whether it's the rainy or the dry season wouldn't matter much because, for as long as the cow manure is dry, it will remain that way because the stable protects it from the rain.

Bauhinia Kockiana - A Finicky Vine

Still reeling from that loss of a Bauhinia Kockiana vine, it would be over a year that I took another interest on this beautiful vine. This time, we had a chance to go to a garden show called the Los Banos Flower and Garden Show in Los Banos, Laguna. The garden show is held at the Social Hall inside the UPLB.

One of the stalls was selling a couple of Bauhinia kockiana's: a small one priced at Php150 and a bigger one at Php250. As I was still upset that my first expensive vine died almost two years ago without even flowering, I was wary. And so I just wanted to buy the smaller vine.

Fertilizer Storage and Labeling Tips

Fertilizing plants is an essential task around the garden, whether it's the organic or the chemical kind of fertilizing. The organic fertilizers like horse manure and cow manure, I keep in the sacks or bags where I collected them. While homemade fish emulsion, I keep in plastic bottles. The store bought chemical fertilziers, however, I put them in disposable plastic jars.

These disposable plastic jars are those plastic jars that used to contain jellies, jams, mayonnaise, peanut butter and other supermarket items. Rather than toss them away, I wash them with soap and water, peel and discard the old labels, and then store the clean jars in a cupboard. I keep them for variety of reasons, and storing chemical fertilizers is one of them.

Bauhinia Kockiana - Overfertilization Mistakes in Growing

After seeing the Bauhinia Kockiana in pictures from websites, I wanted to have one. I've read that it's quite a hardy plant and grows like weeds in many parts of Singapore and Malaysia At least that's what I've read. It should be easy to take care for, I thought. With our weather being similar to that in Malaysia, then I should have no problem growing it.

Then in one of our visits at Sidcor Centris, I chanced upon one Bauhinia Kockiana plant. "I just have to have it!" was the first thought I had. It didn't have flowers at all to confirm its identification. However, both DH and I have researched the plant. She was quite sure the plant being sold was the Bauhinia Kockiana vine because of the vein patterns on the leaves.

Apply Homemade Fish Emulsion Fertilizer

Extracting the liquid fish emulsion is probably the most laborious part in making homemade fish emulsion. But once you get the fish emulsion in bottles, it's very easy to use and economical. The fish emulsion has oil and is therefore thick and viscous, much like heavy syrup. Be sure to shake the bottle before using.

One liter bottle of this concentrated liquid fish emulsion goes a long way. A tablespoon of fish emulsion is diluted in a gallon of water, and it is this diluted mixture that you use to water your garden plants. Never pour concentrated fish emulsion directly on your plants.

Collect Extract Homemade Fish Emulsion

After a month of aerating the homemade fish emulsion mixture to help decompose it, the emulsion is now ready to be extracted and collected. Although there is still some fish and molasses odor, the terrible stink of rotting fish is now mostly gone.

The process to extract and collect the homemade fish emulsion concentrate is a bit more involved than the every other day aeration of the mixture in the past month. You may need a partner to help you in filtering out the undecomposed fish parts and sawdust from the liquefied fish emulsion.

Easy Homemade Fish Emulsion Fertilizer

I've read with much interest from the internet how folks prepare homemade fish emulsion and swear by its effectiveness. There are so many articles saying how simple the process is in making fish emulsion. I suspect though that many of these how-to articles just parrot each other.

There is little material thus far, however, by way of photos and/or videos that illustrate the processes involved in this so-called simple procedure - as of this writing, anyway. So this article will illustrate, by pictures, just that.

Where to Buy Cheap Molasses

Unless someone bakes extensively, one would typically have no need for molasses. I don't bake, so I never experienced using this product at all. Growing up, I've heard molasses as some kind of a food supplement for humans and a staple for horses.

But I learned much later that there are so many uses for this honey-like substance that is a by product for processing sugar. Molasses is also used for some brands of tobacco used for smoking. It's added to dark brewed beverages such as stout and very heavy dark ales. It is used as an additive in livestock feeds and in fishing groundbait.

On the horticultural scene, molasses can be added to the soil of almost any plant to promote microbial activity.

Hauling Horse Manure Organic Fertilizer

One of the nice things about living here in the south is proximity to places that are interesting or beneficial for gardeners. There are garden shops nearby where you could buy plenty of garden plants typically used for landscaping. They may not have the unusual plants and vines that Centris has, but they have a modest selection of lawn grasses that you can buy.

And then there are places where you can get animal manure as organic fertilizer practically for free. We've gone to my daughter's university (specializing in agricultural sciences) to just shovel cow manure fertilizer. This is aged manure, by the way and so there is no offensive odor.

Free Organic Fertilizer - Cow Manure Shoveling

Talk of organic fertlizers and animal manure is up there in the top 5 if not top 3, in my opinion.

I remember scooping up carabao droppings with a shovel by the roadside when I was young. Farmers then rode carabaos to the fields and these animals would poop just about anywhere. This was in my youth when carabao manure was the only fertilizer I used to feed a lone grapevine.

Sadly, I don't remember that grapevine bearing any substantial amount of fruits until it died!

With fertilizers, I still feel though that "organic" is the way to go. That's because it is cheap, if not free.

Vermicompost Applications in the Garden

Once the composting worms are all settled in your vermicomposting worm bins, you may be wondering how soon you can benefit from all this setup. Afterall, you've prepared the worm bin bedding and supplied the composting worms lots of food. So they should be happy.

It would typically take 3 to 4 months before you can harvest vermicompost from the feeding tray. Vermicompost is a mixture of vermicast and unprocessed organic matter. It may also contain worm capsules and small worms. Vermicast is the excreta of worms produced by the action of microbiological life within the digestive tract of the worms.

Feeding Vermicompost Worms in Worm Bins

After assembling the worm bin setup, the next thing to do is to find your composting worms. You can buy composting worms in vermiculture centers or from sellers on the internet. Our garden is so rich with composting worms and so we use those instead. They serve the same purpose and are endemic in our region. We also picked a few worms (African Nightcrawlers) in some composting worm beds from a local vermiculture center.

Composting worms would not be feeding on immediately on fresh raw materials like kitchen and yard wastes so it's a good idea to prepare some ready food in the worm bins BEFORE you would actually be putting in the composting worms. Preparing the worm bins with fresh vegetable waste a week in advance would be good.

Homemade Worm Bins for Vermicomposting - Part 2

The first part of this article discussed some background on how to make a homemade worm bin setup. Also discussed were the components of the worm bin setup. Finally, how-to instructions were provided for making the worm bit feeding tray. In this article the how-to instructions for making the rest of the components of the worm bin setup will be discussed.

Homemade Worm Bins for Vermicomposting

In the internet, there are so many sources of ideas for making homemade worm bins for vermicomposting purposes. Homemade worm bins would range from office or desk bins to pails and buckets. Typically they would have similar ideas on how vermicompost and vermicompost leachate (sometimes called worm tea) are harvested or collected.

Then there are the commercial versions which are vertical worm farms like the Worm Factory 360 and the Can-O-Worms models. These use the stacked trays concept. In this theory, composting worms migrate upwards from one tray to another. This happens when the lower tray is depleted with food and new fresh food is added in the upper tray.

Garden Sprayer for Misting Foliar Fertilizer

Flowering plants that bloom continuously have always fascinated me. I often wondered what the secret was to soil fertilizers for this to happen. In my curiosity with fertilizers, I discovered that there's a category of fertilizers that may also be sprayed directly to the leaves or foliage. These are foliar fertilizers.

But for you to apply these, you need a sprayer. And the only sprayers I had are the cheap squirt plastic bottles. I used one to spray the foliar fertilizer and realized quickly just how difficult it was to apply fertilizer with it.

That's until I found and bought one of these.