Lyric, a question about your "milk bath"...

[beac]

I was just re-reading your post about the non-fat milk/water "bath" and had a couple of questions. I'm asking them here instead of in a PM in case others are wondering the same things. :)

1) You mentioned that you dissolve the powdered milk in warm water. I'm assuming you let it cool to room temp before applying, right?

2) A heaping cup of milk and 7 liters of water "bathes" approximately how many plants/containers? i.e. what size dose per tomato/pepper?

3) I'm guessing you apply it in the cool morning hours on a day you aren't watering, yes?

My peppers & tomatoes are sluggish this year. I think it's the fact that we didn't build up to hot temperatures, but just went from 50 degrees to almost-ninety degrees basically overnight. ("Cool" mornings for watering, bathing, etc. end at about 7am here lately. :( ) I'm really hoping Grandma Lyric's special recipe will put them back on the path to good health and happiness.

:hi:

[bvar22]

1. Me too.

Great questions.
Inquiring minds want to know.
:hi:

[Lyric]

2. Answers:

1. I water my plants with water that's lukewarm--not discernably hot or cold. They really love it. My tomatoes have turned into a veritable forest (in fact I already have several baseball-sized tomatoes that are *just* starting the process of lightening up and turning red), and the leaves on my squash plants are almost a foot across now. The milk water is the same temp, of course. I *only* use this solution for fruiting plants--I don't know what it would do for leafy ones like lettuce or cabbage, so I haven't tried yet.

2. For me, it feeds eight large "Big Boy" tomato plants. A second full dose feeds six bell and banana pepper plants, plus two smaller Isis Candy and Sweet Baby Girl cherry tomato plants. I don't measure precisely--I use a big plastic watering can, circle the plants, and distribute the solution as evenly as I can, making sure to water the *soil*--not the leaves. You can spray it on the leaves too if you have fungus issues, but you'll want to use a fine mister for that, not the watering can.

3. It depends. If I'm just feeding the roots, I apply in the evenings and let it soak in overnight. If I'm misting the leaves, I do it in the early morning so that the morning sun will dry the water from the leaves and leave behind a little milk powder residue. However, keep in mind that I am growing my plants in containers. They require different watering schedules than in-ground plants, and I don't have the insect problems that in-ground plants can have. If I had to guess, I'd say that early morning feedings are probably better if your plants are planted in the ground, so that the milk sugars are less likely to draw surface insects before soaking into the soil.

I've done some more research on this in recent weeks, and apparently the dry-milk thing is actually a pretty well-known "secret" for tomato, pepper, and other fruiting-plant gardeners. However, keep in mind that what the milk does best is to provide an extra boost of natural calcium and phosphorus (in a naturally well-proportioned state) for plants that are already flowering and fruiting, and that once or twice a season you should also be sprinkling just a little bit of epsom salt on the top of your soil to provide magnesium--I use one small pinch per plant, sprinkled at least 5 inches away from the stem. If your tomatoes aren't flowering and fruiting yet, then you would do better to get yourself some worm tea to boost overall health. That's what I use in off-weeks as an all-around organic plant food, and all of my plants just *love* it.

http://www.localharvest.org/worm-wranglers-worm-tea-C4435

Hope that helps!

[beac]

3. It does help. Thank you!

My poor tomatoes are no where near fruiting, so I'll hold off for now. I've been giving them worm tea, so hoping that will eventually set them right. I'm all in conatiners too, so it's nice to know you milk bathe in the evening as that will be one less thing I have to do in the mornings when there is so little time before it gets roasting hot.

Thanks again for clarifying. :)

[Lyric]

4. Hmmm. What did you amend your soil with?

How often and how much do you water? How much full sun do they get every day? Is there any sign of leaf yellowing, damage, wilting, or rot? Any spots or bugs? Are you pulling your suckers or leaving all the growth alone? Are there any flowers or flower clusters?

Just trying to help you figure out what your problem might be.

:hug:

[beac]

5. I used the same mix I did last year (organic potting soil from a local nursery amended with

compost/manure/worm castings), but I started about three weeks later b/c was trying to avoid moving the pots in and out to avoid frost (we recently rearranged the house, so indoor plant refuge space was much less than last year.) I'm using slightly bigger pots for my tomatoes this year, but otherwise the set up is the same.

I'm careful about watering and only do it when the soil feels dry'ish about an 1.5" down into the pot (same guide I used last year) and I have the pots mulched lightly with grass clippings to prevent the soil from drying out too quickly.

They get oodles of great sun-- all day from early morning until sundown.

I pinched off the early flowers to encourage root growth after transplant. (I didn't do this last year, but read about it here on DU and thought I'd give it a try since my transplants were bigger than last year and some arrived w/the beginnings of flowers on them.)

I'm not pinching suckers yet, as the plants are really too small to start that (IMO).

No yellowing or wilting now, though a couple did seem to have a bit of transplant shock at first.

I think the problem is the super hot weather that arrived just after I transplanted them (which I had to delay for several days do to a stretch of daily torrential downpours.) I'm afraid their poor root systems just got cooked and they are having a hard time recovering.

Things were looking a little better in tomato world this a.m. and my Sweet Baby Girl that was the worst of the bunch has had a nice growth spurt in the last few days, so maybe all is not lost. My peppers, on the other hand, look beautiful and healthy, but haven't grown a bit since transplant. Frustrating.



(ETA: Would love to hear what mix you use for your containers, BTW. Sounds like it's a wnning combination.)

[Lyric]

6. Well here's my whole setup and regimen--just in case you find something useful.

I got 5 gallon plastic buckets from Lowe's to use as my containers, because they're so easy to move inside during the early months when the plants are small and the weather and night temps are still unreliable. Even now when my biggest tomatoes are over 3 feet tall, we can still quickly move the buckets to our covered porch whenever there's a severe thunderstorm. I nailed holes in the bottoms and sides for drainage.

My soil is a mixture of four things: regular garden soil (I think our brand was Sta-Green?), organic potting soil, cow manure, and peat humus. I used slightly less peat humus in the soil for the tomato and pepper buckets because I was also using plantable peat pots for the seedlings. I did the mixing in a large plastic storage tub, and my proportions were roughly three shovels of garden soil, two heaping shovels of the organic potting mix, then one heaping shovel of cow manure and one shovel of peat humus. I mixed all of that together thoroughly, then stripped the lower leaves off of my 8-inch-tall seedlings and planted them deep, so most of the bare stem was covered up. I then put an extra shovel of the organic potting mix on the very top, as it contains a LOT of mulching material and acts just like a mulch to keep moisture in, and watered with a homemade transplant solution--a hilarious mixture of two ounces sweet organic tea, an ounce of beer, six ounces of worm tea, and a drop of dish detergent all mixed into 6 liters of lukewarm water. I know it sounds crazy but it's a personal version of what my Grandma used for *her* garden--she didn't have worm tea, though, so that's my contribution for an extra dose of nitrogen right from the start. ;)

My container plants stay out in full sun from 10:00 am until roughly 7:00 pm. We don't let them get rained on at all because this is West Virginia and we have air pollution problems thanks to the mining operations in the area--if we see rain on the radar, we bring the plants up onto the covered porch. I don't have a watering schedule, per se--I just have a gut feeling about when they need water, and so far my gut seems to be pretty accurate. Out of a seven day week, my container plants get watered at least four or five of those days--if I skip a day, I wait for a cloudy, mild day so they don't get scorched. As I said, they never, ever get rained on. Maybe this is a factor for you? Have you checked your area's air pollution stats?

My feeding schedule is simple--I give them worm tea once a month, and diluted skim milk once a week while they're fruiting. I haven't seen any wilting or yellowing leaves yet, but if I do, I'd probably treat it with an extra dose a worm tea and a spritz of the milk solution on the leaves. For the flowers, I flick them by hand to help them pollinate because we don't have enough honey bees around here to do it for me. My tomatoes have one small metal stake to help support them--it looks like this:



I'll probably have to get a bigger one eventually, but using this small one seems to have induced my plants to grow really thick, strong central stems, and even though they're fruit-laden, nobody's bending under the weight. :)

Here are some pics I took about a week ago:


This is the whole tomato jungle from above. They all so bushy and healthy. I had actually JUST pruned some of the lower foliage right before taking this pic, believe it or not. *laughs*



Here they are! The little pots to the right are banana peppers, purple opal basil (hard to see, but it's there), my Isis Candy cherry tomato plant which is much younger than the Big Boys, and the tall one in the rear is my nephew's sunflower that they started from seeds as a little class project. I'm helping him keep it going.



This particular tomato has been claimed by LyricKid because it's the first one starting to show signs of ripening. ;)