Monday’s often are unpredictable.
With the compost tea brewer bubbling away there is now a new focus. If the intention is to give all plants a dose every three weeks I need to feed 1660 plants per week. I am getting between 650 and 800 plants per brew so theoretically that means two brews a week.
It is said that one should spray before the sun gets too high in the sky as UV light is not good for the micro-organisms that are in the Compost tea (CT). To follow this I tend to spray about 400 plants by 9am.
The next issue is whether or not to include some seaweed in the mix.
With the brewer now working well, I am looking to a plan for next year.
As the variety Klaudia normally starts to show some buds breaking in early January, this will trigger the first spray. As they emerge the cycle will be three weekly with just CT, then adding seaweed in March when all varieties are in full leaf.
From then I will give all plants seaweed with every six weeks – or with the second CT spray.
I am going to buy a powered sprayer to speed up the process of the CT sprays, but there is an advantage of a backpack spray to give a good look around every plant. So the seaweed sprays will be more manual.
One final comment about CT spraying – the process of making compost tea involves blowing air through compost and circulating it through a tub of water. Not unsurprisingly particles of compost are circulating in the CT mix which can block a sprayer with annoying regularity. I found the simple solution was to completely remove the inline filter in the handle of the sprayer lance. This works quite well if you spray up onto the underside of the leaf. It still has a tendency to block occasionally.
The second modification came when I was cleaning out the nozzle and dropped the rubber washer that holds the cone nozzle in place. I could not find it , but the sprayer not only worked well without leaking, but also without any further blockages.
It does help though to spray up from the bottom onto the under leaf and this keeps the CT mix away from direct sunlight.
Changing the subject, I have noticed this week a few caterpillars creeping back into the plants. very few, but it is one to go in the diary that there is a second flush of possible predators appearing in week 2 June.
The other observation yesterday was odd bushes with flattened branches. The seabuckthorn plants are still not very sturdy, so for any bird to perch on the top is asking for trouble.
The way the branches have been flattened suggests something like a pigeon or dove. This could be the first interest that birds are having to the berries.
I can live with a hare in the plantation because he largely keeps himself to himself. The odd muntjac deer even comes and goes, but birds taking the berries is a concern.
The berries are ripening now. Klaudia, Elizaveta, Inya, Chuiskaya, all have green berries turning yellow, with the odd one now yellow with a red tinge to the end. Altaiskaya is uniformly green. Sudarushka has not produced much fruit yet.
Strangely Augustina, which is possibly an early variety is also mainly with green berry.
I started thinking that I would log these colours against a paint colour chart, but this is not a universal system, so instead I will log the berry colour against a pH chart.
I have had news from the agricultural engineer that I have been in discussion with regarding developing a hand harvesting tool. We are meeting at the farm in the first week of July. Cracking a simple system with minimum damage to berries and high output is an essential to commercial seabuckthorn farming. The second point to this will be also developing a system to clean the berries and remove the leaf that is striped off in the harvesting process.
This is a major challenge for this year.
The second will be the analysis of the resultant berries.
It promises to be a milestone year.
