gardening primitives give plants a milk bath

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=246x13557

Oh my.

beac  (1000+ posts)      Sun Jul-25-10 01:16 PM
Original message
 
A toast to Lyric!
 
A MILK toast, that is.

Lyric, I've mentioned before in various posts how your milk bath tip saved my garden this year, but I wanted to post this special thanks for sharing your grandmother's secret with us and make sure you knew how helpful it's been in a previously frustrating gardening year. It's an absolute miracle. It brought my squash and zucchini back from the brink of death. My peppers are growing big and healthy and I've just eaten my first tasty cherry tomatoes. I'm using it on everything, including my tomato rootings that are not flowering yet (don't tell grandma...) but still LOVE their milk!-- This evening will be my third "bathing" of the season.

So cheers to you, Lyric, sharer of wisdom and savior of struggling veggies!

amerikat  (1000+ posts)        Sun Jul-25-10 10:55 PM
Response to Original message
 
1. We are preparing a milk bath for the effeced plants in our community garden. Rain for the last 2 days have pushed back the application.

But we should be ready to spray tomorrow. We are being cautious and will only spray some sections and wait to see the results.

I knew about this technique from DU. The woman doing the spraying got it from some other garden forum.

If you do a google search for milk bath.......goes right to DU post from Lyric.

Bravo.

beac  (1000+ posts)      Sun Jul-25-10 11:14 PM
Response to Reply #1
 
2. I've been following Lyric's method of "bathing" only the roots (i.e. pouring the milk water on the soil), but I have since read about spraying the leaves too to prevent mildew, etc.

Viva_La_Revolution  (1000+ posts)        Wed Jul-28-10 10:08 PM
Response to Original message
 
3. I want to chime in too!

We had a wet, cold spring and most of my garden was drowning, little growth and sickly yellow. Within 24 hours of spraying the milk PLUS a generous pinch of epsom salts and they were markedly greener. They are now dark green and going gangbusters.

Hmmm.

franksolich always knew milk was healthy, the healthiest food possible, but I never suspected it would be healthy for foliage too.

[Chris_]

I've seen people use excess milk on their crops.  It seems to work for them.

[Godot showed up]

Coconut milk, that's the ticket. Got plenty of auxins and gibberellins that a growing plant needs.

[debk]

When I was a kid, I remember my mother would "wash" her indoor plant leaves with milk. She would use cotton balled up and dipped in a bowl of milk, and clean off the leaves...always said it was good for them, and it made the leaves shiny.

[Karin]

I'd never heard of this.  It has to be non-fat powdered milk, half cup to 7 liters of water or some such.  They seem to swear by it.  Hmm. 

[miskie]

I wonder what the vegans on the island think about this -- using an animal product to improve the health of food crops ?

[debk]

I wonder what the vegans on the island think about this -- using an animal product to improve the health of food crops ?

  shame on you for injecting some logic into this!!!  [/dummie ]

[PatriotGame]

I wonder what the vegans on the island think about this -- using an animal product to improve the health of food crops ?

Anything that improves the size and strength of a DUmmy's copious pot buds is a good thing - vegan falsehoods or otherwise.

[jukin]

Spraying a milk/water solution will stop powdery mildew very effectively.

[crockspot]

Milk may indeed inhibit mildew.. I do not know.

But plants cannot gain any nutrients from milk. They are plants, not baby cows.

The water in the milk is utilized as water.

Unless you have a dairy farm with lots of unsold milk to dispose of, this seems like a huge waste of money.

[miskie]

Milk may indeed inhibit mildew.. I do not know.

But plants cannot gain any nutrients from milk. They are plants, not baby cows.

The water in the milk is utilized as water.

Unless you have a dairy farm with lots of unsold milk to dispose of, this seems like a huge waste of money.

I think this technique is part science and part myth personally. For example - when I was in high school I worked in the meat & deli department of an IGA market, and every couple of months a Portuguese gentleman would come in and buy the fattiest piece of salt pork he could find.

To feed to his fig trees.

Logic dictates that all he was doing was fertilizing the ground with decaying meat, and that any commercial fertilizer would have a similar effect without making ones garden reek of death... But for whatever reason it seemed to work, as he managed to grow many many figs.

BTW, I can only imagine he had a greenhouse to grow them in - as there is no way in hell anyone in New England is going to grow any figs naturally.. That greenhouse must have smelled awesome..