Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Gloria Baikauskas <gcb49@flash.net>]

I use foliar feedings not to boost nutrients in my plants, but to keep them just healthy enough to repel insects.  I don't feed weekly, as many report they do on my gardening lists. I find it to be overkill. 

 

When we have hordes of grasshoppers feeding on plants stressed by drought, low soil fertility, and many other reasons, it works well to spray <for me> every 2 weeks.  I use only liquid seaweed and molasses, though I have been known to use fish emulsion in an attempt to totally disgust the grasshoppers.   When I have done this I have no grasshopper problem....but my neighbors who do not spray lose everything the hoppers wish to sample and devour. 

 

This has happened more than one year. 

 

I don't normally spray my plants with anything anymore.  I find it hurts as much as it can help because many <even organic> sprays kill both beneficial and harmful insects. 

 

I think foliar feeding has its place, as the articles suggest.  It is, however, not an excuse to ignore soil health which is where the real nutrition in what we grow to eat comes from. 

 

Gloria, Texas