hello all : Been looking at this page for a while - and was inspired to try something I read - a wild yeast captured from Caraway seeds. After 5 days and a few additions of my own - think I have a live sponge - Started with soaking FRONTIERS ORGANIC Caraway seeds ( I read this - dont remember what site - said organic would be sun dried as to heat dried) in some water in jar - dash of flour - not really sure why next morning drained seeds , added 1/2 of flour closed cap of jar and shook to mix - within 1 hr I had froth - next day still frothy - so put into bigger jar and added 1/2 flour and water - shook to mix - cracked lid for outgas - very frothy and smelled like fermentation next day less froth strong fermentation smell - so added some apple cider vinegar from a dropper I was cleaning out - secured cap and shook - cracked lid for outgas - next day, little movement but lots of hooch and strong fermentation smell - so I added more vinegar , did the mixing etc... this morning I was making bread with yeast - decided to play with the concoction - used up organic fruit juice sweetened apricot fruit jam jar took 1/2 of the mix I started - just shook that to mix and cracked the lid - could smell a touch of vinegar in the mix - the main jar I just added some home stone ground white winter wheat flour - maybe 2 tablespoons and mixed with wooded spatula I mixed the yeast dough I had started last nite -now thick like pancake batter - just checked it a moment ago and appears to be live and starting to bubble I shall report back tomorrow with more result - thought those might be interested in my experiment cheers:

Hi Jasmine: That fertilizer recipe of 4 gallons water & 1 cup alfalfa meal & 1 T. molasses sound great !! Thank you. Few mistakes that I did which I hope others won't repeat: 1) Last year: The deer ate Sweet Promise and Firefighter hybrid. They were so bare without leaves, so I gave them high nitrogen fertilizer NPK 10-5-4. That burnt both in high heat, plus drove down potassium & calcium. Both had lousy blooms, plus cane-borers invaded Firefigher's weak stems. 2) Chicken manure is best only twice a year due to its salt. GERDA in HMF, zone 6b, has the best garden, and she uses chicken manure twice a year, after 1/2 bucket of cow manure in spring . Jeanie in PNW informed that the rose park fertilized with animal dung in the spring, and nothing afterwards. Cantigny Rose park here did that a decade ago, and it was their most healthy year. 3) My most healthy rose, and best blooms to leaves ratio is Arthur Bell. I did nothing, except chicken manure before the ground freezes, and the second time early spring. 100 % healthy with glossy foliage. 4) My worst rose, full of black spots, is Yves Seedling #2. It went from 100% healthy early spring (winterized with manure & cracked corn), to disease-fest. That rose has the most salt-damage: 2 applications of chicken-manure, plus sulfate of potash to produce more blooms, then ground limestone & red lava rock, then 2 soluble MiracleGro. I tested to see if chemical fertilizer induce black spots, and it sure did. 5) The stingy roses like Frederic Mistral, Jude the Obscure and Eglantyne BENEFITED from once a month of sulfate of potash & gypsum .. more blooms. Frederic is still clean with ground-limestone & red lava topping. Jude and Eglantyne broke out in B.S. with MiracleGro soluble. Salt in chemical fertilizer drives down potassium, necessary for disease-prevention. 6) Comte de Chambord in the ground is still clean with one application of sulfate of potash & ground limestone & red lava rock. Old Port next to it gets 2 applications of MiracleGro, and broke out in black spots. For pots: Duchess de Rohan and Rose du Roi gets sulfate of potash & gypsum ... both are still clean. Wimpy Duchess de Rohan also gets blood meal and some chicken-manure, still 100% healthy. Chicken manure is high in boron, zinc, and copper. Both zinc and copper are anti-fungal agents. La Reine and 2nd Comte de Chambord in pots: Both broke out in horrible black spots after 2 MiracleGro applications this month. I use less than half the amount recommended. 7) Same report with roses in front: none of these had brewer's yeast nor rice bran. The ones that got chicken manure only are 100%, the ones that got MiracleGro broke out in black spots immediately. I can't wait until more rain to de-salt the damage of chemical fertilizers. Less is best, and slow-released like manure is best. 8) Few years ago I used Lilly Miller acid fertilizer NPK 10-5-4 with chicken manure, plus chemicals. Great spring flush, I get impatient, and give it the SECOND time early June. It got hot & dry, and Mary Magdalene broke out in mildew, DID NOT improve no matter how much tap-water I gave. So this year I learn my lesson: nothing on Mary, except spring application of chicken manure. She's 100% clean, tons of buds. Below is Mary Magdalene's 2nd flush, taken today July 5.

I sprayed with neem, but I read some posts saying neem isn't all that effective in the later stages of blight. It's not. Neem really isn't a fungicide. It's use as a fungicide is primarily due to it's being an oil. Horticultural oils can 'seal up' attachment sites making it more difficult for fungal spores to attach and infect and they can also smother existing spores so they can't develop. As such neem and all oil products are best used as a preventative rather than a cure. Now, is it that milk encourages fungus that curtails blight, or is it that it encourages bacteria, specifically lacto bacteria, which does the same? Some of the questions you are asking go beyond my knowledge so I won't comment/speculate and risk leading you astray on those, but will speak more generally. There are competing theories as to why milk seems effective against some fungal diseases on some plants. To the best of my knowledge it was first found effective against powdery mildew on grapes, but was subsequently tested against powdery mildew on some other plants and found ineffective or inconsistently effective. It has also had some testing for other fungal pathogens with mixed results. Corn meal is another means of controlling fungal pathogens. In this case it is suspected that corn meal, for whatever reason, attracts/feeds trichoderma fungi which are mycoparasitic and kill *some* other fungi. There are even commercial strains of lab bred trichoderma (T22 aka root shield is one). However, results are inconsistent. That's the primary problem when biological controls or substances meant to attract biological controls are employed. The biologicals require fairly narrow environmental parameters to work effectively and there is no way to guarantee nature provides them when/where needed.

Re-post the info. I posted in June. Today Old Port is a BS-fest & doing nothing as of today, August 30. Last month I scraped off red-lava-rock, and replaced with horse manure plus high-phosphorus NPK 4-10-7 (blood meal, fish bone meal, sulfate of potash, and kelp meal) . I should had done what I did in spring: chicken manure NPK 5-3-2, plus red-lava-rock for potassium. Lesson learned, I find that minerals (in rock dust, or Azomite, or red lava rock) is great to INCREASE the yield in crops. The problem with MG-potting soil is it's not rich in minerals like clay or rock dust. Here's an excerpt from below link: http://remineralize.org/2007/11/soil-remineralization-and-the-climate/ " Remineralization also enhances and speeds up the process of composting, so if you are composting for your garden, consider putting on some rock dust. Remineralizing by adding rock dust to compost is a very practical way to apply it to soils. For Forests The results of long term experiments released in 1986 showed that in a forest where pine seedlings were remineralized, after 24 years the wood volume was four times higher than in the untreated area. Remineralization trials of a dying forest on Mt. Mitchell by Dr. Robert Bruck, Ph.D., showed that twelve weeks after application of rock dust, height of growth of red spruce was increased by 27% over non-treated controls, and height growth of Fraser fir was 19% greater than the untreated controls. (Forestry Research packet) The Men of Trees organization in Australia is doing remineralization trials with many species of trees in Australia with phenomenal results, such as five times the growth of trees seedlings of one variety of eucalyptus, over the untreated controls. (See Forestry Research packet) For Agriculture The best source of soil minerals is simple crushed gravel dust. In 1976 John Hamaker spread gravel crusher screenings on part of his ten acres in Michigan. The following year, in an area of sparse rainfalls and dry summers, with no irrigation, his corn produced 65 bushels per acre, compared to yields of under 25 from other local farms. Moreover, when independent analyses were done, Hamaker’s corn was found to contain 28% more protein, 47% more calcium, 57% more phosphorus, 60% more magnesium and 90% more potassium than the same type of corn grown with chemical fertilizers nearby. - See more at: http://remineralize.org/2007/11/soil-remineralization-and-the-climate/#sthash.3RNlqfTo.dpuf Here's the result of my top-dressing Old Port with red-lava-rock, the free-sown snapdragons go beserk. Old Port got winter-killed to 4 inch. tall early April. Pic. taken June 8: