Magic Growth Formula - The Secret of True Record Holders

There really is a magic formula for growing giant sized food plants. But you'll have to read through the boring crap below to find out what it is. Te he.


Looking back on the year with the benefit of the harvest, I'd estimate that July has always been the month for speediest growth for my garden and allotment. It's a month where the plants grow so quickly that you can almost see it happening.  So this July just gone, I tied a marker onto a bean pole just to measure how fast my beans were sprouting at the time of their optimum growth. Twenty four hours later, it had added four inches - that’s an inch every six hours. Incredible! 

July as it happens is also the month when I start brewing compost tea - a magic formula which not only increases the speed of growth but also increases the health of plants and the size and quality of the produce. And now as we push toward the end of September, I'm still using compost tea in order to help me squeeze every last ounce of growth from the 2011 season.

I was first introduced to compost tea by John Evans, a Waterford born gardener who has used it to clock up nine giant veg Guinness world records as well making it the subject of an international business venture.

John Evans (right) the nine time Guinness World Record Veg man

Compost tea making is a bit like making yoghurt, where a base culture is "amplified."

In the same way as bringing on a yoghurt culture, compost tea brewing involves taking a sample of good soil microbes and increasing their numbers a thousandfold by artificial means - in this case by injecting oxygen through them.To make compost tea you need a couple of things. First a five gallon bucket. I use catering mayonnaise containers. Next you'll need an air pump of the sort commonly used in aquariums. You'll get a basic model at the pet shop for under twenty quid. Next purchase a length of plastic tubing to go with it - this costs about twenty cents a foot. Get a length of about six foot. After that you need an airstone. This is the heavy air distributor through which the air is blown to dissipate it into hundreds of little bubbles rather than the large single bubbles you'll get from the end of the tube on its own.

An aquarium airstone for the bubbles

All these can be acquired at a pet shop.Fill up your five gallon bucket with water. Set the airstone with the tube attached right to the bottom of the bucket and turn on the pump. Leave it to bubble for about three to four hours. This is vital for two reasons. First it aerates the water to a level which is perfect for microbe production. Secondly - and this is hugely important - the bubbling will help remove the chlorine from "city" water which would otherwise kill the microbes. It also removes heavy metals which can also impede the tiny animals. Next we need the "culture." This is simply a sample of matter which already has a microbe population in it. Microbes exist in a range of materials and the most commonly used for brewing compost tea include compost (obviously), dry farmyard manure, chicken manure, top soil, worm casts from a wormery and fish waste from an aquarium.

Let the water bubble for at least three hours before adding anything - especially if it has been chlorinated

I like to mix up a range of different matters on the grounds that it should also vary the microbe content of the tea so I take two trowels full of compost from our compost bin, two trowels of topsoil from the garden and one trowel of shop bought manure.These are spilled into the bubbling water and stirred in with a stick. The aeration of the water enables the microbes to multiply in the water at a phenomenal rate.

One expert suggested that the population of "good" microbes in the mix doubles every seven minutes thanks to the aeration pumped bubbles and the "food" they're given. Next you'll need to find something to feed that microbe population explosion. Evans preferred microbe nosh is molasses. Last year I used a few good squirts of squeezy bottle honey per batch, this year I'm using a few ounces of ordinary white sugar.

John uses molasses, I use sugar to feed the microbes

You leave the mixture to bubble away, stirring it every so often to agitate the culture from the bottom and prompt it to release microbes - enabling them reproduce even faster. It's important to stop the process after 24 hours. Don't let the brew bubble for any more than 30. Once this point has passed the microbe population begins to change and the aerobic or beneficial microbes which initially manifest themselves start to get replaced by "bad" anerobic microbes.

 If anerobic microbes have taken over you'll know because the mix will stink. A mix dominated by beneficial microbes should smell slightly sweet with no nasty odour.The next important factor is to ensure that you use the mixture straight away because once the bubbling stops the microbes start to die and once again anerobic microbes which are damaging to plants (and people) begin to take over. So valuable is my compost tea that I use a soup ladle to dole it out to my plants. Wear gloves or else wash your hands directly after doling out the mixture because it's superrich in bacteria.The earth's soil has been historically rich in beneficial microbes which work with plants in a mutually beneficial way.

In with the compost to help provide the "starter" microbes

They break down soil nutrients into a form which plants can digest easily. They also protect the plant from fungi and strengthen it against attacks from pests.Tilling land has killed off these beneficial microbes and the use of artificial fertilisers has finished off what populations remained in many commercial soils. This in turn has weakened food plants and taken flavour from the resulting produce. Compost tea is fast becoming recognised as an organic and environmentally friendly way, of returning these beneficial microbe populations to the soil in an instant.To see these microbes up close, go online and scour youtube for compost tea samples shown under a microscope. Microbes are tiny animals and the samples shown are manic soups of thriving and quivering biodiversity.

Great lads! There they are, the soil microbes all going mad for a decent brew of tea.

When John Evans took me on a tour around his garden in Cork some years ago he showed me how firm and waxy the foliage was on his food plants - he described this as a protective "biofilm" provided by the microbes in the tea. This he induced by spraying or drizzling the mixture directly onto the foliage as well as treating the soil around the base of the plant.I ladle two or more measures of tea to the base of the plant and then I try to drench the foliage as well with a few more. Some people like to filter the tea and then spray it on the foliage - both above and under.

For his part, Evans believes the microbes not only stimulate the roots of the plants but that large numbers of dead microbes (their life cycle is short by our standards) also provides additional ideal food for the plants.Deployed in the rapid growth month of July, the effects of my first batch of compost tea are immediate. Some late cauliflower plants put in at the end of the garden have been struggling to establish themselves in the corner of the garden which gets the least sunlight. Within two days they have noticeably perked up and expanded.

The two chilli plants in the greenhouse which have weakened and drooped because a colony of ants nested under them and undermined their roots, are suddenly perky and solid again and have burst into flowers. My four aubergine plants in the greenhouse which have also been slow to put on size have noticeably surged. Outside in the garden, the tea-ed up beans have gone interstellar and those corn plants in the "Indian garden" which have lagged behind their brothers in sunnier positions are now catching up thanks to selective tea application. Meantime the blueberry bushes in planters are suddenly producing double sized fruits.

Make a magic beanstalk with compost tea

Properly made compost tea is truly a magic formula for gardeners and anyone can avail of it in the peak growing season at minimal cost. It's not just a good fertiliser, it's a complete beneficial bio system. The exact opposite of biological warfare for plants.Downsides? Well it's the courgettes you see. They need to be picked when they're young and tender. But these are fast customers to begin with and it's been said that a courgette can go from flower to full grown fruit in 24 hours. My problem is that they're now going further - turning into full blown marrows a foot long and four inches wide - before I can catch them for the table. Every time I look there's another inedible artillery shell hidden in the foliage which will have to be chopped up and thrown back into the compost.Just an example of a turbo charged garden in the fast lane when it's been fully tea-ed up in our fastest growing month.

Whoah!!! There go the beans after a cuppa.

Rum, Botany and the Lash..

Quiz time. Which of the following are true berries in the botanical sense?

(a) raspberry (b) potato (c) strawberry (d) Chilli (e) blackberry (f) banana or (g) pumpkin?

The correct answer is: potatoes, chillies, bananas and pumpkins - all of which are "true" berries in the botanical sense. Meantime raspberries, strawberries and blackberries are not. It’s all something to do seeds and pulp coming from a single ovary you see - that and smug botanists. 

The sort of stubborn, contrarian, pointy headed, sciency insistence that says potatoes are berries and berries are not, is just one reason why I happen to believe botany is among the barmiest sciences. History’s big bots deployed more money than sense - cruising the planet’s nether regions in hideously expensive expeditions to "discover" plants in their naturally occuring habitat, uproot them, rename them a “tippitiwitchet” or whatever, and then transplant them elsewhere on the planet where they’ve no business being.

Mad botanists...putting plants where they've no business being.

This was generally accompanied, like releasing rabbits in Australia or mink in Ireland, without a fiddlers for the environmental consequences.Here in Ireland mad bots brought us the parasitic mistletoe to suck life from our oak trees (James MacKay of Trinity College) and bad bots at the Botanic gardens in Kew and Edinburgh happily distributed Japanese knotweed to the masses throughout these islands setting it off to become our most destructive invasive species.

T’was the most renowned bot of all time, Sir Joseph Banks (founder of the Royal Society) who lobbied to have HR genius William Bligh appointed to captain the Bounty - the ship Banks designed to run a thousand breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indes. Banks wanted the breadfruit (not native to the Indes) to feed slaves who were chopping sugar cane (also not native to the Indes).

Captain William Bligh...mutiny consultant.

Despite Banks being cast adrift for months with Bligh after the resulting mutiny, Banks subsequently fixed it for Bligh to be appointed Governor of New South Wales. There the harbour was so overrun with busy bots that they named it “Botany Bay.” The result of Bligh landing was the Rum Rebellion in which he caused a whole province to mutiny. The ironic ending to this sorry tale of rum, botany and the lash came with the point flat refusal of the sugar slaves of to chow down on Banksy’s bread fruit.

But back to berries and false-berries.

July being peak berry time in Ireland, Plot 34 and my back garden are yielding strawberries, raspberries, red currants and gooseberries. I’ve had a less impressive crop of blackcurrants this year due to drainage issues (the allotment holder next door dug a trench behind them) but otherwise things are berry good indeed.


Look at the goji's on that!!

These days mad amateur botanists like my Dad (who’s been inviting all and sundry out back to have as look at his gojis) don’t need vast inheritances to take them sailing around the world in search of exotic plants -  they can simply pop down to Lidl, Aldi or their garage forecourt - the latest venue to flog foreign fruit bushes.Given their growing superfood status, this year Gojis are red hot around the world. From the Himilayas, the berries are extremely high in antioxidants indeed but have also been attributed with all sorts of quack claims including that they cure cancer and impotence.

The Chinese claim that Gojis were an vital part of the miracle diet that helped local herbalist, Li Quing Yuen to live to be 256. Research backs up the claims that the goji guzzler who died in 1933, was actually born in 1677 along with unearthing Imperial documents which detail official congratulations bestowed on Yuen for his 150th birthday in 1827 and his 200th in 1877.So it’s no wonder the world is going mad for the hugely expensive Gojis. But plant importation has not been without issue. In the UK there have been claims that plants imported from China via Holland (for a eurozone passport) carry diseases which threaten domestic tomato and potato crops.

Quing Yuen at 255 and not looking a day under 156

Experts there have urged buyers to take on locally developed plants.Alternatively here in Ireland you can just go out and dig one up. Thanks to mad bots, gojis have already been growing wild here for centuries. They’re mostly located in coastal areas with the biggest population existing the Wexford and Waterford shores where they’re better known as the Duke of Argll’s Tea Plant. Just make sure you get the right berry bush.What these naturalised pioneers prove is that gojis have no problem at all with Irish conditions and soils. They’ll also grow well in the shade and in containers and offer the change to bound your garden with a superfood producing hedge.

Bulletin boards online show that an untoward number of buyers end up with massive plants but no berries. The secret is pruning and feeding. Gojis are extremely heavy feeders and quickly clear the soil of nutrients. To keep cropping heavily they need manure or organic feed but not commercial chemical based fertilisers which produce leaf growth but no berries. Meantime there’s almost no information out there about proper pruning. If someone knows the proper procedure, tell me and I’ll pass it on.

Personally, I have less problems questioning the introduction of north american blueberries to Ireland because they’re so similar to the native fraughan as not to  make a difference. Also, like the bog bound fraughan they can’t self seed in average standard Irish soils because of their acid preference.  Blueberries are another superfood with high antioxidant qualities.

Cranberry plants complete the list of johnny foreigner come-latelys. The sprawling ground crawler takes a lot of space and like the blueberry, it requires a damp acid soil. If you must persist, try growing them on the top part of a two tier raised bed system so the limbs can hang downwards.

Some recently deceased cranberries yesterday

Plant them with upwards growing blueberries to maximise the space and this arrangement also allows better control of the soil conditions. Feed them with Rhododendron/azalea fertiliser.As for advice on your bananas and pumpkins, ask a dotty bot.