Controlling Box Blight on a Box Hedge

Last autumn 2013, I was asked to look at a couples box hedge that they said was suffering from the dreaded box blight and on closer inspection I agreed that it did indeed have it.

I am a great believer that many of the diseases plants that plants suffer with can be prevented or cured from with right nutrition. And, with this in mind I proposed to the client that I would do a soil test for them. The soil test showed up some soil deficiencies including, magnesium and iron.

As a result of the soil tests, I prepared a fertilizer mix to replace the nutrients that were low to bring them up to the correct levels as per a Reams soil test. I also gave them some Effective Microorganisms or EM to help suppress the fungal spores of box blight. They were also given some GrowBest to apply to the soil, an organic fertilizer that contains seaweed fertilizer, rock dust and worm castings.

This May 2014 I was pleased to be informed by the clients that the box hedges were growing back more healthily than before, with regrowth in areas that had previously been badly affected by the box blight.

I too was pleased to see that my theory, that this disease could be controlled by restoring the nutrient of the soil was a correct one, as you can see in the picture of the same part of the hedge as above.

Regrowth of Box Hedge after Box Blight

The hedge has now been cut during June and further sprayed with Actiferm (Effective Microorganisms) to stop any infection that may be lurking from entering any wounds.

7If you too would like me to assess you box hedge or would like to prevent this disease from affecting your box hedge, then please get in contact via my website www.shop.embiotechsolutions.co.uk 

GrowBest EM Seaweed Fertilizer with Added Rock Dust and Worm Casts

GrowBest A Natural Fertilizer For Your Garden

Environmentally and health-conscious farmers and gardeners are always seeking out effective fertilizers that will help their plants to grow while also reducing the occurrences of insect infestations and disease. One very efficient and unique product, GrowBest, offers all the above while including the added value of eliminating chemicals from the foods that you are eating.

GrowBest is a fertilizer which contains a natural element: rock dust. It also includes seaweed. Seaweed fertilizer can help to maintain the ground moisture while providing nutrients necessary for plants to grow. Other ingredients are included in the GrowBest fertilizer that makes it unique to all others. Worm casts or castings and effective microorganisms are also mixed in with the other ingredients. No other fertilizer offers this same mixture of ingredients.

Science supports the potential for all these ingredients being effective in the growth of any kind of garden you wish to produce, whether you are working on your prize roses or you wish to produce a small garden or large field of foods for your family or community.

Seaweed provides alginic acid. This is a soil conditioner which helps empower the soil to hold onto moisture: the life’s blood of any plant. In addition, many vitamins, and antibiotics are natural in seaweed and provide additional support to the soil and subsequently to the plants.

Rock dust gives the garden or field a natural pesticide. Plants will not be affected by disease or insect infestations. This natural pesticide is the safest alternative to chemical pesticides. It is safe for soil, plants and people. We can thank the farmers of Scotland for this discovery. They were some of the first to discover that quarry dust helped to not only revitalize their overspent soil, but also kept the insect population down.

Worm casts or castings are the waste products of specific worms. Their excrement is extremely rich in nutrients for plants, containing trace minerals and growth enhancing characteristics. This additive will prompt appropriate root growth by increasing the microbial life of the root. This natural product will not burn your roots, even when used in high quantities. It will also maintain for most of a garden’s growing season: 2 months.

Effective Microorganisms (EM) is a cultured liquid of specific microbes that can help your organic garden to flourish by production of . These microbes can live in both high and low oxygen regions and so are extremely efficient. The primary three microorganisms lactic acid, yeast and photosynthetic bacteria. There are more than this, as well.

All these ingredients work together to optimize soil value and plant growth. With the unique mixture provided by GrowBest, your garden will grow the best.

Water Butt Treatment - Keeping Rainwater Fresh

The Perfect Water Butt Treatment

Garden Water Butt

Collecting rainwater in a water butt or water tank from the roof a building has been going for eons and is a very useful way of collecting a free source of water. However, as the rainwater falls from the sky onto the roof, it will pick-up debris that has either fallen onto the roof or into the gutter and gradually washes into the water butt where it begins to get broken down by the anaerobic bacteria that a present in the water.

Gradually the water then begins to smell stagnant and this is especially present when water has been standing for a long time and during hot weather. The stagnant water can also become a breeding ground to water borne diseases that affect humans, such as legionella, and for plants - Phytophthora which can be fatal for plants.

Therefore, it is important to prevent debris from falling or being washed into the water butt by putting a piece of mesh over the down pipe, but remember to keep this clean from large pieces of debris such as leaves which will make the rainwater pour over the guttering rather than down the pipe; smaller pieces will naturally get washed into the water butt.

Another thing to remember, is to always keep the water butt covered with a lid to stop any algae from developing in the water and to stop mosquitoes from breeding.

 

Water Butt Treatments - The Best Way to Stop Rainwater Turning Stagnant

As I have already said, rainwater can turn stagnant when left without use for long periods and therefore we need ways to stop this from happening and there are a couple of solutions.

There are a number of safe non-toxic water butt treatments on the market, that reduce bad odours and prevents scum, slime and algae from forming. The problem with these are, unless you empty the water butt each time or you know how much water you have used each time, it is difficult to know how much water butt treatment to add each time, plus you have to remember to add it.

AquaFresh EM Ceramics Water Butt Treatment

However, there is an alternative - EM Ceramics Water Butt Treatment. A bag of em ceramics are dropped into the water of your water butt and they continuously stop rainwater from turning stagnant. They work by emitting an infrared frequency that has the ability to always keep the rainwater smelling fresh and prevent smelly bacteria from proliferating. They are such an easy and simple solution that works.

EM Ceramics have EM or Effective Microorganisms baked within the clay and they are a collection of 80 different types of microorganisms that have a beneficial influence on us and the environment. EM was originally developed by Dr Teruo Higa from Okinawa, Japan.

 EMBiotechSolutions

How to Descale a Kettle?

A large proportion of the population in the UK live in an area that experiences hard water through their water supply and this is because of the limestone or chalk bed rock that the water is sourced from, either directly from the river network or from under ground aquifers which act like large underwater storage tanks.

Limestone or chalk is largely made up of calcium carbonate which is highly dissolve-able by acids and as rainwater is slightly acidic, which is why ones hair always feels soft after being in the rain, the acid is able to dissolve the calcium ions into solution; other elements such as magnesium ions can also be dissolved by the acidic rainwater.

 We can see the results of the calcium and magnesium ions being dissolved into rainwater when they naturally precipitate out to form stalactite and stalagmites in caves, gradually building up or down over time and when one leaves a tap dripping, limescale will gradually form on a sink surface.

Boiling Water!!!

So, now we know how and why calcium and magnesium ions end-up in our water supply via a little bit of chemistry, and as a result, when water boils, those same calcium and magnesium ions precipitate out of the water. This then cause the build-up of limescale inside ones kettle over time.

Allowing the limescale to build-up inside a kettle will then require more and more electricity to heat the same amount of water until such time, in extreme circumstances, the element of the kettle actually burns out because it has become too hot, and so using more and more energy will cost more and more money.

Therefore, one needs to descale a kettle on a regular basis to keep the kettle working at its optimum efficiency. So how does one go about this?

Chemical Descalers

 

There are a number of different chemical descalers on the market that use different chemicals as there mode of action to react with the calcium and magnesium ions, such as citric acid, glycolic acid, hyrdochloric acid, phosphoric acid and sulfamic acid.

Natural Descaler

 

For a more natural approach one can use white vinegar, simply boil the kettle and add enough white vinegar until the water starts to fizz. Do this on a regular basis and the kettle will be free of limescale.

EM Ceramic Descaler

 

Kagen EM Ceramic Kettle Descaler

A third solution, is a piece of EM Ceramic, which when used with a water filter jug, will stop limescale from forming altogether. 

The piece of EM Ceramic is simply submerged in the filtered water and when left for half an hour or more, the piece of EM Ceramic has an affect on the water, preventing the calcium and magnesium ions from precipitating out, thus no more limescale forms inside the kettle. 

Even, if your kettle already has limescale, the affect the EM Ceramic has on the water, will soften existing water until all the limescale is removed.

Having used one of these pieces of EM Ceramic for a while now, I would recommend one of these to anyone, because it will stop the limescale, save you money on descaler and electricity, and is simple to use, plus it is good for the environment.

Simple, but effective.