Never Spit Into The Wind
Gardening is a great way to learn about and transfer things you know into greater lessons in life. And it has been a week of learning in my own garden. For example, one of the first things any sailor knows is to never spit upwind. You are either taught this by someone more experienced or you figure it out really quickly on your own. Guys have a special reason to learn the moisture into windward lesson as any guy will gladly tell you. As a sailor, I've always paid good attention to this little life lesson.
As a gardener, I've been a big fan of fish emulsion and I've written about it more than once in these columns as one of the key tools in the gardening big-blossom growing tips. This is great stuff but it does have a somewhat odiferous quality to it. So this past week, I got one of the greatest little lessons my garden has taught me in many years. I have a new form of fish emulsion that I'm running some trials on in my garden. It is intended to be a foliar feed. This means that you spray it as a fine mist onto the plant's leaves and the plant absorbs this material through the leaf. It is an economical method of getting minor and micro nutrients into a plant.
But back to the lessons of the week. To spray this fermented salmon (and it smells like fermented salmon I might add) I used a hose end sprayer. This came with the product and I was very impressed with it. It put on a goodly mist and I happily wandered around the garden dragging the hose and easily spraying away and coating all my plants with salmon. This wasn't the lesson. When I got to my big and expensive blue spruce that was starting to candle out, I knew it would appreciate the fish emulsion so I turned the nozzle in that direction raising it at the same time to hit the top of this 6 foot tall plant. And as I was starting to douse the plant, I realized very quickly that I was spraying this fine mist all over the tree but I was doing so into the wind. Too late a realization as it turns out; the mist was nicely blown back at me and I and the blue spruce were well covered in fermented salmon. But this was not the lesson.
Oh no, this was not the lesson at all. I confess I started giggling. I mean it's one thing to spit into the wind and it's entirely another to spray fermented salmon fertilizer into the wind. It was probably one of the smelliest lessons I've ever learned but that wasn't the lesson. I wiped my face off with my sleeve and all the while laughing at myself and understanding I had to strip outside because these clothes weren't ever going to be worn in the house; they were going straight to the washing machine.
And then I learned my lesson.
I licked my lips.
I am here to tell you today that fermented salmon fertilizer tastes exactly as you would imagine it should by its name. No wonder I've been adopted by 5 neighbourhood cats. No wonder I had to have very spicy food for dinner that night so I could taste something. No wonder there's a case of mouthwash sitting in the bathroom. No wonder that kissing has been put somewhere very far down the agenda until next weekend or next month when it might have worn off. It was a good lesson that I wish I had been told about rather than do it myself. Consider yourselves told.
Having learned the lesson about spraying fish fertilizer into the wind, I want to tell you about two things connected with this particular lesson. The first is that the hose end sprayer is a delight to work with. In the past I've used a watering can and another applicator but the kind of hose end sprayer that produces more of a mist is a wonderful invention. I'm not letting this one out of my garden and will refill it when it is empty. Other units I've used put more of a stream on than this one; I'll report on the manufacture of these units in a future column so you can hunt down a similar unit.
The second note to pass along is the effect this foliar spray had on my plants. While a lot of them don't look like anything has happened because they were growing well to being with, I did focus some extra attention on a sick mini-rose. This plant had grown well last year and the similar plant 12-inches away is growing gang-busters. But this one had yellowing leaves and was going downhill fast. I sprayed the sick one with a double dose of the foliar spray and 48 hours later, the plant has green leaves. They aren't as dark green as the neighbouring plant but they aren't yellow anymore either. I'm going to hit it again (from upwind) this week to see what happens.
While it is a little hard to see results on some of the other plants as they were doing OK to begin with, I rather think the garden has a better vibe about it and the plants seem healthier to this gardener. But other than the objective data (pictures) of the sick rose, I have nothing to demonstrate this. My gardener's sense of things though is that the plants have all responded with a bit of healthier growth to this foliar spray.
Just don't stand upwind and certainly don't lick your lips if you do.
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