Gardening with Reciprocity

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One teaspoon of good garden soil contains several yards of fungal hyphae, several thousand protozoa, a few dozen nematodes, and a billion invisible bacteria. Not only do these invisible members of the soil food web interact and communicate with your plants, they produce nutrients and food for them too. In turn, your happy plants put out root exudates (basically plant sweat), which attract and feed more fungi, bacteria, nematodes, and protozoa... and a healthy symbiotic relationship is formed.

Things you can do today to start fostering a healthy soil food web

• Stop using all chemical pesticides & herbicides. While killing off those pests and diseases, they are also killing off large portions of the soil food web. While short term they may get rid of those diseases and pests, in the long term it's a waste of money and time to have to constantly be 'treating' plants with chemicals multiple times a season when letting nature take care of it instead is free
• Stop using chemical fertilizers. Once plants can get those "fast food" nutrients provided by chemical and synthetic fertilizers, they don't need those beneficial microbes to get nutrients and the symbiotic relationship ends. Once those microbes leave, the earthworms and other arthropods that eat them move out too
• Stop roto-tilling. This very common gardening method breaks up fungal hyphae, and chops up and crushes earthworms & arthropods. While it seems like roto-tilling is destroying weeds and fluffing the soil, it's destroying soil structure and disrupting the soil's food web
• Cover bare soil. Use leaves, grass clippings, straw, cover crops, woodchips, etc to protect that top layer of soil. Bare soil is prone to being compacted in heavy rains or snow. Adding a cushion layer or "blanket" keeps the soil fluffy and full of air underneath
• Feed your soil with compost, worm castings, worm tea, mycorrhizae, rock dusts, etc. Adding compost to the top of your soil will inoculate it with everything it needs to get that balance back
• Inoculate your seeds with endomycorrhizal fungi at planting time or apply to the roots of your transplants.

The following are your friends! These beneficial creatures will hunt & destroy unwanted pests or improve conditions in your garden to make it less attractive to the "bad bugs"

• Ladybugs - control aphids, mites, thrips, insect eggs. You can build ladybird bug boxes or build log piles to encourage nesting. Ladybugs can live up to 3 years and eat 5,000 aphids in a lifetime
• Ground & Rove beetles - ferocious predators. They have no trouble hunting down and ripping apart slugs, aphids, caterpillars, slug eggs, and other soft bodied animals. Build a beetle bucket to provide a beetle hotel to give these bugs a safe place to hide. Most ground beetles live 2-3 years and are active in the garden from June to the fall. There are over 4,000 species of rove beetles in North America
• Earthworms - chew up organic material and pull it  into the top layer of your soil, aerate soil with extensive tunneling, fertilize the soil with vermicompost, thus feeding plants and helping them become more healthy and resilient to pest attacks
• Hoverflies - feed on thrips, aphids, scale, mites and more. They look like bees or wasps but are harmless and are also very effective at pollinating. Plant a diverse range of flowers to attract hoverflies to your garden
• Lacewings (lacewing eggs shown in photo below) - larvae voraciously eat aphids, thrips, spider mites, whiteflies, and other soft-bodies insects. The larvae of some species carry shriveled bodies of prey and bits of trash stuck to the spines on their backs. Adults mainly eat nectar, aphid honeydew, and pollen. Lacewings can produce several generations in one year. The most common lacewings on the Prairies are green lacewings and goldeneyed lacewings. Lacewing bug boxes can be constructed to encourage overwintering. Adult lacewings cannot resist coriander flowers
• Parasitic Flies - lay eggs on leaves of plants. When eaten by caterpillar, the larvae use the caterpillar's body as a host
• Damsel Bugs - these bugs are common across the Prairies. They eat spittlebugs, tarnished plant bugs, mites, sawflies, and more
• Parasitic & Ichneumon Wasps - one of the most beneficial predators out there. They fiercely hunt out their prey by feeling for the "vibrations" of larvae tunneling in wood or in the ground. The adult wasp then injects eggs into host larvae. They also control whiteflies, aphids, cutworms, and many many more. Adults are attracted to nectar-producing flowers. Not an actual wasp, and cannot sting humans or pets. (photo of ichneumon wasp below)
• Pseudoscorpions - look like tiny scorpions without the stingers, but are much more harmless than their name implies. Eats springtails, mites, and most small insects. Can live up to 5 years
• Chalcedony Wasps - much like parasitic flies, use hosts such as ticks, mites, and nematodes
• Dragonflies & Damselflies - One adult female eats 14% of its body weight each day. A beneficial predator that zips around snatching mosquitoes, horseflies, grasshopper nymphs, and other small insects. Some damselflies reach speeds of up to 34 km/hr. Avoid spraying or mowing the bordering native sedges and cattails near bodies of water near your garden
• Harvestmen - also known as 'Daddy Long Legs.' These long-legged hunters are not actually spiders, but a cousin to the spider. Eats small insects like spider mites. They like long grass, and keeping strips of grasses or grains will give these predators a place to hunt and hide
• Centipedes - very much like earthworms in terms of fertilization and aeration, but are carnivorous, rather than plant-eating worms
• Amphibians - eat slugs, flies, grasshoppers, ants, caterpillars, etc
• Bats - eat moths like yellow underwings and other cutworms

In order to attract the above, care needs to be taken to ensure the environment is healthy and diverse. This means using less or preferably no chemical pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. When I started gardening and I saw a "bad bug", my first instinct was to grab some pesticide and take care of the problem. Little did I know, this was setting my garden up for a cycle of pests. Many pesticides are broad-spectrum and non-selective, meaning they are just as harmful to beneficial species, as they are to the pests. Once natural predators are eliminated, the pest populations can't be kept in check and re-surge quicker. If populations can be kept in a healthy balance, pests rarely get to a point where they start taking out entire crops or get unmanageable via picking the pests off or spraying with a blast of cold water.

Introducing a wide range of plants to your garden will help attract a diverse group of insects or animals. Mono-culture gardens are like an unlimited buffets for garden pests. Using native plants is best, taking care to not introduce anything invasive. Plant a mix of flowers and foliage. Annuals and perennials. Early bloomers and late. Provide a water source for those summer hot days.

This is our go-to recipe for boosting and maintaining beneficial bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes in our soil. ACT can be used every two week and applied as a foliar feed or soil drench

**Be sure to read our notes on brewing and using ACT safely**

Notes:

Always wear gloves and protect yourself from splashes. Getting a splash of worm tea in the face is not recommended at all, don't ask me how I know

In order to keep your tea from becoming anaerobic and from becoming contaminated with E. coli, a small aquarium pump will not be sufficient. Pumps with at least two outlets are best and should cycle at least 0.05 cubic feet (0.0014 cubic meters) of air per minute, per gallon of water. 

If using as a soil drench, we use a small cup to remove fluid from the 5-gallon bucket and pour the ACT directly near the stem of the plant to ensure roots are drenched.

Apply tea in the early morning or evening. UV rays kill microbes. Apply at least 30 minutes before it rains, as the bacteria and fungal hyphae need about 15 to 30 minutes to attach to leaf surfaces.

When used as a foliar spray, ensure at least 70% of plant foliage is covered. Cover both sides of leaves. Use a pressure pump that does not exceed 70 PSi. 

Brewing Time: 24-36 hours

Supplies:

5-Gallon Bucket

1 x Air Pump (see important notes below)

2x Air Tubing

2x Air Stone

Cheesecloth, pantyhose, organza bag, or other material with at least 400 micrometers mesh

Ingredients:

4.5 Gallons De-chlorinated Water

4-5 Cups Worm Castings (or compost)

2 Tablespoons Unsulphured Molasses (or cane syrup, maple syrup, and fruit juice)

The following are optional and can be tailored to suit your soil and plant needs. For a more fungal-dominated tea, add 2-3 teaspoons of kelp, humic acid, fulvic acid, phosphate rock dust, aloe vera extract, fish hydrolysate, yucca, zeolites, or blueberry, apple, and orange pulp.

Steps: Assemble tubes and airstones. Place tubing with the air stones attached into the bottom of your bucket. (When air bubbles from the aerator are smaller than 1 millimeter, they can cup up microbes. Using an air stone will ensure that the air bubbles are the appropriate size.) 

Place your worm castings into your 'tea bag'. Tie and place into bucket. This can be weighed down with a rock if needed. 

Add molasses and any optional ingredients.

Fill buckets with dechlorinated water. Leave some space at the top, as sometimes the proteins from worm bodies can cause foaming. We like to place cardboard under our brews to catch any splashes and drips

Aerate for 24-36 hours. The tea should NOT smell, but rather have an earthy and sweet aroma. If the tea smells bad at all, that means it is anaerobic, and can NOT be used, as it may contain harmful bacteria such as E coli.

After brew time is complete, the fluid is poured into a sprayer (see tips below) or used as a soil drench

Clean your buckets, tubes, and air stone immediately! The biofilm that coats these items can be very difficult to remove if left to dry. Adding some baking soda into water and rinsing well with pressure should do the trick.

*Always do your own research before starting a new garden practice to ensure that it is right for your garden or yard. Our favorite resource on ACT is 'Teaming with Microbes' by Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne Lewis

Coming Soon...