From ancient times to this day, pine and spruce needles have been held in high esteem in Rus'. They use it for medicinal purposes, prepare infusions, make jam, add it to a bath, and even use it to scare away evil forces, in those places where the traditions of their ancestors are still remembered.
Serve this fragrant and highly useful material maybe summer residents who are looking for an effective and harmless way to control pests, as well as additional fertilizer for the soil.
Needles are a priceless treasure trove useful substances, it contains calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, copper, but insects do not favor it.
Needles as pest control
It is especially effective in protecting fruit and berry crops. An apple codling moth, a moth that destroys currants and gooseberries, a weevil that spoils raspberries and many other insects will never approach a plant sprayed with an infusion of pine or spruce needles.
The use of needles
To cook it, you need to insist one and a half kilograms of green needles in ten liters hot water, cool and strain. With the infusion obtained from the sprayer, first treat the stems of the plants, then the branches, and lastly the leaves. This treatment should be carried out three times in a row, once a week during the beginning of flowering trees and shrubs.
Needles show excellent results when used to protect the garden. A concentrated infusion of two kilograms of needles filled with ten liters of water is infused for a week, in a place protected from light, stirring daily. In order not to burn the leaves of plants, coniferous infusion is diluted with water in a ratio of 1:3 or 1:5.
Such a solution is incredibly effective against aphids, suckers and cruciferous flea. Good results are obtained by processing lettuce, cauliflower and many root crops.
Even the eternal enemy of potatoes, the Colorado potato beetle, cannot stand the coniferous “soul”. In addition to spraying, you can add a mixture of needles and water in a 1: 1 ratio between the rows of plants.
It is not necessary to carry out spraying of plants during the period of rains and heavy dew. As for the rest best time for the procedure - morning and evening. If you add about thirty grams of needles to the solution laundry soap and ash extract, this will help eliminate the effect of soil acidification.
In addition to these, no other components should be added, as they will weaken the effect of the infusion on pests.
With the use of infusion of pine and spruce needles, crop yields usually increase. You can do this purposefully by preparing a special solution. To do this, you need a mixture of pine and spruce needles, mixed with ash.
Use of pine needles as fertilizer
All this must be boiled in water, cooled, strained and diluted with water in a ratio of 1:5. Spray the plants twice. As a result of such processing, for example, tomatoes grow more intensively, sprout together, do not get sick with anything and bring a much larger crop.
To protect strawberry bushes from pests and diseases, as well as to provide them with sufficient nutrition for intensive growth, it is necessary to close up in upper layer soil mixture of needles with sand, compost and ash in equal parts.
With such feeding, strawberries grow much larger, and the yield is more on average one and a half times.
When planting potatoes, needles as a fertilizer are generally irreplaceable. She is able to destroy the scab, even if the planting tubers are affected by it. The needles qualitatively increase the yield of potatoes, protect them from harmful insects and many diseases. A mixture of needles, ash, bark and compost is applied directly under the potato tubers and from above in a volume of one liter.
By the way, for storing potatoes in the cellar, you can also use needles according to the gardener V. Shchelkov's method. If potatoes are fumigated monthly with pine needles mixed with sawdust, then it will not only not rot, but will retain all its useful properties.
Thanks to the experience of the famous gardener L. Rendyakov, today every owner land plot can grow in your garden excellent harvest Luke. Rendyakov covers the planting of onions with coniferous spruce branches, which is removed after three weeks.
Then the soil needs to be well mulched with needles, so that it perfectly retains nutrition, moisture and looseness. Weeds do not germinate in such soil, it effectively protects onions from diseases, and also greatly increases productivity: from one kilogram of sowing, the onion yield is forty kilograms.
There are those who oppose the use of spruce and pine needles on the site, citing the damage caused to plants when young needles are removed from the forest. In fact, the gardener may well use the litter, since it has the same properties as the green helper growing on the trees.
If there are no needles - use coniferous concentrate
In pharmacies, you can buy coniferous concentrate in the form of bath salts or in powder. This is a proven, budgetary and, most importantly, pest control that is not harmful to trees or people.
Dilute two to three tablespoons of concentrate in a bucket of water and spray fruit trees when the buds swell, the second treatment is when the first leaves hatch.
The most interesting thing about this spraying is that in this way we confuse pests, because of such a “disguise” they completely ignore fruit trees, because they “seem” that they have a coniferous tree in front of them that they don’t like.
More on concentration: if you dilute 4-6 tablespoons of the concentrate in a bucket of water, you can destroy aphids and caterpillars. From aphids, this remedy works at any time during the season.
Aphids are generally the most harmful pest - they stick around a bush, populate all the young branches, not without the help of ants, of course, and suck the juices from young shoots. So, after spraying with coniferous concentrate, this whole team disappears in an instant.
Video - using needles in the garden
In conclusion, I suggest you watch a video from Tatyana Kudryashova, from which you will learn about the benefits of pine needles in the garden.
The needles of pine and spruce are known to most readers mainly by their healing properties which are well studied and widely used in medical practice. According to well-known herbalists in the country, with the help of needles today it is possible to cure up to 2/3 of all diseases, including cancer. However, needles, as experience shows, are capable of more, including serving a person in his fight against pests and diseases, in increasing soil fertility and plant nutrition to enhance their growth and development.
The most effective results of the use of pine and spruce needles are known in the fight against pests and diseases of fruit and berry crops: apple codling moth, moth on currants and gooseberries, weevil on raspberries, etc. In all these cases, it is enough to take 1-1.5 kg of needles, insist it in 10 liters of hot water, cool, strain and use a sprayer to process trees and bushes, and it is best to first trunks, then branches and then a green crown. Such treatment of trees and shrubs is advisable at the beginning of their flowering and 2-3 more times with breaks for a week.
The experience of using needles against aphids and suckers is also very effective, and they take 2 kg of needles per 10 liters of water and insist for a week, keeping the infusion for about 7 days in a dark place and stirring daily. Before use, the infusion is diluted to a ratio of 1:3 or 1:5 in water. Both pine and spruce needles give good results in the fight against cruciferous flea on salads, cauliflower and a number of root crops (radish, turnip, radish, rutabaga, etc.). Moreover, the plants are either sprayed with a solution of infusion in water at a ratio of 1:5, or a mixture of needles and water at a ratio of 1:1 is introduced into the aisles of plants. There was also a positive experience with the use of needles in the fight against the Colorado potato beetle on potatoes.
It should be noted that spraying with a solution of needles of fruit and berry and vegetable crops can be carried out both in the morning and in the evening, avoiding only periods of dew and rain. In order for the solution not to be lost, you can add 30 g of laundry soap to it. According to my observations, some gardeners add an ash extract to the solution of needles, which, in combination with soap, eliminates the likelihood of soil acidification that occurs when using needles. The addition of chopped coniferous branches and cones to the infused mixture of needles and water by individual gardeners, according to available information, only weakens the insecticidal properties of the solutions.
A certain experience in the use of pine and spruce needles in last years I also acquired when growing tomatoes, strawberries and potatoes. In the first case, we added ash to a mixture of pine and spruce needles, boiled the mixture in water, filtered, and then treated 10 tomato bushes twice with a solution having a ratio of 1:5. By this we managed to induce them to more intensive growth and eliminate the backlog in development. What is important, the treated bushes bloomed earlier and more amicably than all the others and did not hurt anything, and the harvest on them was greater than on the untreated bushes.
But, perhaps, strawberries and potatoes were the most pleasing, when planting which, in the first case, a mixture of needles with sand, ash and compost was used in equal proportions, and in the second case, a mixture of needles, bark, ash and compost in the same ratio, and on In a strawberry bed, the mixture was embedded in the soil of the upper layer, and when planting potatoes, it was applied under the tubers and on them in a volume of about 1 liter per bush. As it turned out, strawberry bushes, being in such soil and having enough nutrition and moisture, did not have pests and diseases, bloomed faster than others and yielded a crop of almost 1.5 times more than before. At the same time, the berries differed not only in their big size, but also had a particularly pleasant taste.
However, the potato was the most surprising, the planting tubers of which were affected by scab. When digging up its first bushes, we were surprised to note that none of the tubers had not only scab, but even any of its very tenacious sclerotia. The harvest of grown tubers turned out to be quite good, although the weather that year was not very pleasing.
Excellent results when using needles are obtained by an experienced gardener L. Rendyakov. In his practice, he covers the onion plantings with coniferous spruce branches, and after removing the spruce branches after 2-3 weeks, the topsoil is well mulched with needles, due to which the soil retains friability, nutritional value and moisture for the entire period of onion cultivation, does not have weeds and protects plantings from diseases and pests . As a result of all this, from 1 kg of sevka, the harvest of a full-fledged onion is up to 40 kg, and for about 4 years and regardless of the weather.
Known from the press is the experience of the craftsman gardener V. Shchelkov, who uses needles mixed with sawdust to fumigate potatoes stored in the cellar with smoke. Such processing of the cellar is carried out for about 0.5 hours, and monthly, until the end of the storage period. At the same time, potatoes not only do not rot, but also retain their properties well.
From all of the above, it can be seen that the needles effectively serve not only as a doctor of the garden and vegetable garden, but also as a fertilizer for the soil and plants. This is explained by the fact that the needles contain, first of all, a very rich complex of physiologically active substances; it also contains many chemical elements: calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, cobalt, zinc, etc.
Of course, there are also obvious opponents of the use of needles in areas, pointing to the harmfulness of removing green needles from trees and the possibility of terpenes, ethers, etc. garden and garden are very small, and scientists have not found a noticeable difference between the properties of green and fallen needles. So, it is quite possible to get by with fallen needles.
Anatoly Veselov, gardener
For several years now, I have been using a wonderful fertilizer from pine needles on my site. And I start harvesting coniferous twigs after the New Year holidays, when people begin to throw out handfuls of Christmas trees that have served their purpose (although for some, a half-bald “beauty” is prescribed on the balcony until spring). If there is a forest belt near your garden with coniferous trees, then you can cut off young shoots (candles) of spruce or pine in the summer. Just keep in mind that freshly cut branches should not be immediately put into action, but it is recommended to keep them in the cellar for a week. This will improve the bioavailability of your pine needle fertilizer.
Next, the branches with needles must be finely chopped (in pieces about 1 centimeter long) and poured into any handy dish (for example, into a large saucepan), leaving 6-7 centimeters to the edge. The contents of the pan are poured with cool water and put on medium heat. After boiling water, the broth is allowed to boil for 5-10 minutes at a minimum, and then left for 5-6 hours on the stove at open lid so that the needles are properly steamed. The needles are rich in silicon, but it is extremely reluctant to go into the decoction. Therefore, it is advisable to let it brew in a closed form for another 2-3 days. Then the broth is filtered, and the concentrated fertilizer from the needles is ready! Store it in sealed bottles in a dark, cool place (you can in the same cellar).
In season, plants are fed with fertilizer from needles as follows. A liter of coniferous broth is diluted in a bucket of water (that is, 9-10 liters) and garden crops are watered under the root, after which the soil is loosened superficially. The same composition can be used for. However, it should be borne in mind that the needles acidify the soil, and most plants do not like this. To neutralize the acidifying effect, it is enough to add a tablespoon of creamy lime to 10 liters of solution. Instead of lime, you can take eggshells. It is done like this. 10 tablespoons of crushed shells in a mortar are poured with 3 liters of water. A container with crushed shells is placed in a dark place and insisted for 10 days (if the room is hot, then 7 days is enough). After filtering, the solution is also stored in a dark place, since light contributes to the destruction of calcium. In 10 liters of coniferous fertilizer, pour a glass of infusion on chopped eggshell. The effect of feeding will increase many times if you add to the mixture.
I have noticed that turnips, cabbage plants, peppers, eggplants, daikon, cucumbers and carrots respond best to needle fertilizer. Zucchini, tomatoes and radishes also respond well to coniferous treats. Other cultures are generally indifferent to such top dressing (again, according to my observations). At the same time, there is no doubt about the healing effect of needles on the soil, so I urge all avid vegetable growers not to be lazy and properly stock up on pine and spruce twigs after the end of the New Year holidays.
Potatoes, as a second bread, clearly dominate among cultivated crops, and in the diet of amateur gardeners. And this is despite the abundance of vegetables and fruits, which begins at the end of July.
In an effort to achieve good harvests healthy potatoes, gardeners have successfully created an original nutrient mixture and mastered two new ways of growing it.
The composition of the nutrient mixture
A fertilizer mixture for potatoes is a compost substrate with the addition of ammophos, ash, coniferous sawdust or shavings and needles at a ratio of the first to the second 1:2.
When using such a complex mixture for planting potatoes with its consumption of 1 liter per hole, the first three components give the soil in the holes the necessary enrichment with all elements, and the last two - friability, moisture-air capacity and a healing effect.
Almost 5 years of experience in such cultivation of potatoes showed that when planting any of its varieties affected by scab, the latter main enemy completely disappears, although its sclerotia are very tenacious.
Suitable for planting any variety
Thanks to the innovation, you can completely abandon the expensive elite varieties of planting tubers and safely purchase them even on the market, without fear of scab at all. At the same time, the potato yield, as a rule, is not lower than 4.0-4.5 kg/m2.
Spruce-pine needles as a protector of potatoes
If the potatoes are previously kept in spruce-pine sawdust with needles for a month, then the tubers with scab, after such exposure before planting, will throw off their “shabby clothes”, and the harvest from only one bush will reach 30 weighty potatoes.
Coniferous sawdust, bark and needles, added to the soil or covered on top of the tubers, relieve potato plantings from the attacks of the worst pest - the Colorado potato beetle.
The richness in these components of physiologically active substances and, above all, the resin contained in them, has an extremely beneficial effect on the condition of the potato.
Mulching grass plantings
For inexperienced gardeners and gardeners who are just starting to develop plots, the method of growing potatoes with mulching of its plantings with freshly cut grass or hay is of undoubted interest.
Plant the tubers directly into the ground, making only very small mounds of earth above them. Then, as the tops grow, just cover it with grass. At the same time, the grass will compact and settle, the tops will penetrate through it again and again, and you will immediately fall asleep with more and more portions of mulch.
Only by the end of July, such grass additions can be stopped, since it doesn’t matter whether the stems stand or lie, intertwined with their neighbors on the grass litter.
The yield of potatoes with this cultivation reaches 1-1.5 kg per bush. This method of growing in developed areas is suitable for any soil, including clay, waterlogged, and even with debris (stones, iron, glass, etc.).
Advantages of the method
Planting potatoes in this case does not require hilling and does not need weeding, as weeds self-destruct under layers of grass. In addition, when harvesting potatoes, you can use not a shovel, but a pitchfork. Neither pests nor diseases were observed in the plantings.
Double row method
The second method of growing potatoes is based on the double row method. First, in the middle of the bed, along the cord, a collar was made of soil, and at its sole there were two slightly inclined planes for double rows of tubers planted in holes in these planes in a checkerboard pattern with a step of 30 cm, and between rows of 25 cm. mixture described above.
When the tubers began to germinate, the stems that appeared were repeatedly covered with soil from the pile, and this was done until a furrow with a bottom at the level of the roots formed in place of the pile, and the double rows did not take the form of a ridge. Part of the soil for its addition to the extreme rows was taken from the passages between adjacent beds.
Moisture supply in the root zone was regulated both by creating (with a lack of moisture) and eliminating (with an excess of moisture) small grooves in the middle of the ridges, and by closing or opening earthen ledges made at the ends of the main furrow. In the absence of rain, water was supplied from a hose into the main furrow, and from a watering can into the minor furrows.
Results
As a result of the implementation of this method of growing potatoes in a bed, it was possible to ensure continuous hilling, significantly increase the volume of ridges and provide stable favorable moisture to the soil in the zone of roots and stolons.
In combination with the above complex nutrient mixture, all this made it possible to increase the potato yield by almost 1.7 times and harvest it from 1 m2 of area in the amount of 6.5-7 kg instead of 3.9 kg. As before, the potatoes did not have any diseases and had very good taste.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that all of the above applies to seed potatoes purchased on the market, varieties Elizaveta and Nevsky. If we take into account that today there are stronger elite varieties of potatoes on sale, then the yield on the site under the specified conditions may be even higher.
Quick weeding of potatoes from weeds in the garden
Quick weeding potato weeds in the vegetable garden
I have about 4-5 acres of land under potatoes. I plow the entire area in autumn with a horse or an electric plow. If I use manure with a high content of straw, I plow it in for the winter, at the same time I plow in the leaves collected on the site, sometimes I bring rotten straw from the collective farm field to the site.
If I use compost or liquid manure, I plow them in in the spring. During this time, the birds (I have about 60 bird houses on my site and sparrows and tits live in many of them) carefully “process” the site and select weed seeds (there are especially a lot of them in liquid manure, so it can not be plowed for the winter). The site after the bird processing turns out to be as if harrowed (like a rake).
In the spring, after plowing the entire area, I mark it out, trying not to plant the same crops in the same place (for this I have a magazine with planting patterns).
On the potato plot I try to make furrows from north to south. As noted, in this case, the yield of potatoes is higher. I plant potatoes under the cord (for this I have prepared two pegs, on which the cord is wound). I make the distance between the rows at 60 cm. I plant potatoes under a shovel, a bayonet deep.
I plant part of the potato in the same hole with the bean. In addition to the fact that with it the potato yield is higher (the bean accumulates nitrogen), the bean sprouts earlier than the potato and outlines the direction of the furrows well. After planting potatoes, the plot is not harrowed, because. less weeds appear on clods of earth.
When the first shoots appear, the site must be sprouted to knock down the crust and weeds. I do this work early in the morning with a special rake (I made them myself: the length of the tooth in them is 70 mm, the pitch is 30 mm, the width of the captured strip is 60 cm, the tooth is turned with ribs in the direction of the rake during work).
The weeds dry out in a day. Considering that the planting is shallow (when planting under a plow, the planting depth is one and a half times more), seedlings appear quite quickly, and I spend the first hilling with a hoe, which I also did myself. In shape, it is an equilateral trapezoid, in which the sides and bottom sides are sharpened.
With the first movements, I “shave off” the weeds, rake them up to the potato bush (this is an additional fertilizer) and then turn one or the other corner to the ground and rake it to the potato bush.
I fall asleep potatoes so that the tips of the leaves are visible on the surface of the earth. Two weeks later I spend a second hilling in the same way, but I rake up more land for potatoes. This completes the mechanical processing of the potato section. In summer, potatoes and beans provide a dense shade, and there is practically no grass.
Digging potatoes with a shovel. After 5-6 meters I make heaps of potato tops and grass. If the roots of wheatgrass or thistle come across, in this place I loosen the earth more carefully and select them.
After harvesting potatoes, heaps of grass with tops remain on the site, which lie here for two or three weeks, then I bring them to compost pit. In the place where there was a pile of grass, there are a lot of weed seeds. At this time, the birds begin to work hard.
I noticed that sparrows have one “habit”: when there is an abundance of food, they do not eat alone, but call their brothers from other sites.
As a result, the plot turns out to be all finely "plowed" and all weed seeds are collected. Only after that I lay out manure or straw for the winter and plow the entire plot. This is how I grow potatoes, practically without weeding them.
