Dears, Upon seeing aphids I would tend to think the sap is weak and watery. If you tasted this sap (as good a test, if not better, as a refractometer) it would be bland rather than rich and catch-at-your-throat. To some extent 501 WILL help, as it influences the strength with which the silica force comes up from within the earth , and that is what carries the lime and other strong minerals upward along with the nitrogen, which is what makes the plant lush.
But the real key is the clay, which is the mediator between silica and lime and is what needs stimulating if the silica force is to carry lime up into the sap of the plant and to the growing tip. Thus the sure-fire remedy--I suspect almost every time--for aphids is horn clay. Apply it along with applications of horn manure and horn silica and you not only won't see any imbalances between lime and silica and your basil won't rush too bloody quickly to bloom, but you won't see any aphids. Tony Robinson (Rambler Flowers) will probably remember digging up his horn clay when I gave a workshop at his place in August of 2000. It was one of the best examples of fungal (mycorrhyzal) development I've seen in horn clay. But, of course, I haven't seen as much horn clay as all that because it isn't so widely made as yet, having not been specifically recommended in the Agriculture Course. Nonetheless, I have slides of Tony's horn clay and you can see the rich fungal development. This is what you want on your plant roots. Mycorrhyzal colonization of plant roots can increase the mineral uptake of a plant by a factor of 10 or more. Clay mediates between silica and lime all right. It's the bridge that get the lime, phosphorus, potash, etc. into the plant. Here's a "Steiner said." On pages 32 and 33 of the Agriculture Course, Creeger/Gardener translation, Steiner is talking about the mineral forces and their tendency to crystalize and to become free from the Earth's influence and come under the influence of the "distant cosmic forces that are within the earth." He goes on to say, "Let me remark here that if we are dealing with a soil that does not carry these influences upward during the winter as it should, it is good to furnish the soil with some clay, the dosage of which I will indicate later. With the clay, we prepare the soil to conduct the crystalline force upward, for the plant growth above the Earth's surface." Horn clay will also cure spider mites, grasshoppers, and quite a few other insect infestations. I remember one Florida nursery under shadecloth where in the less lush area Pitosporum had absolutely no spider mites while the lusher areas were infested.There are a couple of species of predatory mites that eat spider mites, and I was using a small Radio Shack microscope watching this process. The predator mites were racing around the leaf, pinching the sloth-like, sucking spider mites as though they were Hansel's witch checking to see if he was ready to roast yet. In the area with the weaker sap they kept racing around, checking but not eating. In the stronger sap areas there simply weren't any spider mites. The predators had them completely in check. Taste a leaf in the weaker sap area? Mild and the juice could be swallowed pleasantly enough. Taste a leaf from the stronger sap part? Whew, the caustic limeness of it warned you not to swallow. The remedy for the area where the plants were too lush and the nitrogen uptake was well ahead of the lime was horn clay. Incidentally, in making horn clay, when you take it out of the horn, DON'T scrape off the fungi and dispose of this before drying and grinding the clay, unless you are trying to collect a little concentrate horn clay fungi. That fungi is what you want, in aces and spades. It is one of the chief keys to how horn clay operates. And thanks, Tony, for making such wonderful horn clay. What have been your experiences in using it? Best wishes, Hugh Lovel >> >Have used 501 four times this season on indoor tomatoes. We had the best >plants ever and unusually few fungal diseases. Sweet basil,though, tends to >bud straight after application, but plants also ended up more fungus >resistant. Small inconvenient really and a nice proof that 501 works! But I >agree with Grotzke: I would not treat tomatoes and f.ex lettuces at the same >time: unless I wanted seedheads on my lettuces! > >Daniel Visit our website at: www.unionag.org
