What does the lawn tonic contain? I used to really be interested in Jerry Baker's recipes, but have found simpler means to accomplish the same thing and I don't need to store a 20 gallon tote full of ingredients.

I remember that he loved listerine for fungus, I think. The tonics seem to address a wide variety of problems in one concoction. I really don't want to be adding something to kill fungus if I don't have fungus issues, does that make sense? In my humble opinion, simpler is better.

So, the tea is used as a rooting hormone.

I never waste good beer on the lawn :-) Shampoo is good and unless your soil magnesium is high, the Epsom Salts will green things up harmlessly. I use it once in a while to green up my garden plants, kind of a foliage enhancer that I use when guests are coming over.

Jerry Baker was popular as America's Master Gardener back in the 90s and early 2000s. He was big in the PBS pledge drives on TV. Back then this forum, like all lawn forums at the time, was very unfriendly to organic gardeners and VERY unfriendly to Mr Baker. If you could go way back in time you would even find me arguing against his homespun tonics and potions. But as I have learned a lot more about soil, my thinking is that Jerry Baker was ahead of his time.

I think when you mix beer with enough water to spray it over your yard it becomes far too diluted to have any effect. I think the beer was more for showmanship. Shampoo, on the other hand, has proved to be very effective in softening hard soil. Tea, like beer, is far too weak to do anything. Epsom salts can lead to problems or exacerbate existing problems with clayey soil. Before using Epsom salts you need a soil test that tells you you need it and tells you how much to apply. The magnesium in Epsom salts is what causes otherwise normal soil to become mucky when dampened. Some of Baker's other ingredients include tobacco juice. This is now universally condemned as being poisonous to just about everything. Another one was a sugared soft drink like Coke of Sprite. These are fine but might be more expensive than you need. If you want to apply sugar to the soil, each can of soft drink has 11 teaspoons of sugar in it. Or you could spray molasses. Sugars work as food for the beneficial bacteria in the soil.

If I was to make a garden tonic, it would contain 3 ounces of liquid seaweed, 3 ounces of milk, 3 ounces of molasses, and 3 ounces of baby shampoo all added to a hose end sprayer with water to fill it. Then spray that over the yard to cover 1,000 square feet. If you are spraying upright plants, then spray every surface of the plant including trunks, stems, and the underside of the leaves. What this mix does is feed all the microbes at once. When the microbes on the outside of the plants are healthy, they help the plant's own protection system work to fight off bugs. I also think that a healthy plant becomes "invisible" to pests like aphids and spider mites.

I believe that pests are attracted to unhealthy plants. There used to be a plant researcher here in San Antonio named Malcolm Beck. Beck owned GardenVille, a locally famous supplier of compost. He has retired from just about everything, now, but...anyway, I visited with him in his greenhouse/tilapia ponds one day. He showed me three plants in 4-inch pots. The three plants were touching at the pot which meant their little canopies were all intermingled. Two of the plants had a 10% mix of compost mixed in with WalMart's generic potting soil. The one plant that did not have the compost was covered in aphids while the other two plants, all touching each other, had absolutely no aphids. That visit convinced me that healthy soil was very important to a healthy garden.

>>the mixture is 1 cup beer, 1 cup baby shampoo, 4tbsp instant tea

I can see the theory. Beer for the organics, shampoo for the soil softening and water viscosity change, tea for rooting, a touch of nitrogen, and a hair of organics.

However, at that dilution, only the shampoo will be effective. On the up side, the beer and tea aren't going to hurt anything, either. There are far cheaper and easier ways to get a little organic material and growth hormone into the lawn.

As David mentioned, kelp, milk, molasses, and shampoo will work far better--but none are necessary for spot repair if your soil is already in shape. They're a good all-around tonic for general health and can be used in the lawn and gardens liberally.

>>also he advises to add Epson salts to organic fert when applying

Never. Epsom salt is a reasonably pH neutral method of adding magnesium to soils. That should never be done without a soil test stating you need Mg. Adding it to soils that have sufficient magnesium will tighten up the soil, rendering it more impenetrable to air and water, plus compete with the absorption of other ions by the plant roots.

>>was wondering what others here on this forum thought of his advice & tonics

Meh. After doing the research, I came to the conclusion that he has one or two good ideas out of fifty or so, or about the rate that a blind pig will find a truffle. The percentage isn't high enough to impress me much.

If you simply dropped organic fertilizer at the correct rates four times a year (northern lawns), you'd see a much more dramatic change. Balance your soil resources via a good soil test and you'll see a much more dramatic change. Simply feed with anything properly, water correctly, mow correctly, and control weeds and you'll see a much more dramatic change.

Everybody--including me--wants a magic formula, but there simply isn't one. There are several formulae that can help, but repeat applications and attention to the lawn are still required.

I think the theory for adding magnesium is that it attracts dew and retains moisture that might otherwise evaporate. Here is a picture showing the application of mag chloride to a dirt road to keep the dust down. I took the picture about 11am. It's easy to see where they stopped spraying.

While that works for him in his neighborhood (southeast of Hemet, CA), it might not work at all for you for the reasons morph mentioned.

Around south and central Texas a company called Medina Agriculture packages mag chloride in a product called Medina Soil Activator and Medina Plus. Medina is on the hairy edge of positioning itself as an organic company, but most of their products are pure chemicals, but that's pure marketing. They dance around it. They do have some dry organic fertilizers which are well regarded, but the liquid fertilizers are all synthetic chemicals.

>>it attracts dew and retains moisture that might otherwise evaporate.

It does, but so would any other hygroscopic salt. The magnesium on the roadway will also tend to settle dust as it binds the particles very strongly. In lawn soil, however, the water attracted isn't that significant compared to the usage patterns.

I don't object to use on roads since it isn't that mobile in soils. But on lawn and garden soil, bad idea. Constant use over the course of even modest periods of time will cause major issues.

Thanks for the information on Epsom Salts.
I apologize to the OP for stating that it would be harmless. I have a lot to learn yet.

PKponder: You did say it's harmless if your magnesium isn't high already, so you were actually completely correct. For low magnesium soils, Epsom salts actually will green things up beautifully since magnesium gets used in the chlorophyll molecule.

And roses, where I do sneak in a little Epsom salt once a year even though my levels are optimal across the property. Roses are rather demanding of Mg, but just a tiny handful per bush per year is enough.

I have a different spin. He is a Quack for the most part. While most of his potions and tonics are harmless, they are also useless because they are diluted so heavily. He is also a known Fraud. He claims to be a Master Gardner which he is not. He has never attended an accredited Master Gardner program from any university or horticulture program.

At the same time his bug killer recipe was deadly and extremely toxic making your own nicotine sulfate. If diluted as he recommended was OK, but keeping a quart bottle of Nicotine Sulfate around is very dangerous. It does not have to be ingested to be deadly as it is easily absorbed in the skin. You can buy books that have the same recipe to kill your lover applying it to clothes like underwear over a period of a week.

He had one potion some found useful at times like a back yard Bar-B-Q of 1 tablespoon of Lemon Ammonia and 1 Tablespoon of dish soap to 1 gallon of water to spray down the area. It did make things smell nice and drove insects away for a day or so. But what he did not say is it can damage plants by washing off a protective wax called cuticle.

Now if you like organics and quirky potions then the real Deal is my ole friend Paul James from Tulsa OK has a few books on the subject with a zany spin on life. To bad HGTV is no longer a source of Garden information. Just high end home construction. Paul was the best they had and the real deal Master Gardner.

I'm not sticking up for him but I believe the "America's Master Gardener" was the name of the show. It is unfortunate that those words actually mean something to real master gardeners. A master gardener is someone who has passed a series of course work from a state agriculture university, so the actual qualifications vary from state to state. To proclaim one "America's Master Gardener," he would be presuming to have all knowing experience and education. I believe the term is hyperbole. He's a showman. PT Barnam's circus was not the greatest show on earth, but that's what he called it.

The plant's cuticle is a waxy coating that keeps water from touching the surface of the plant. Every plant has one and some are much waxier than others. One of the reasons some plants seem impervious to herbicide is the waxy coating sheds the herbicide before the herbicide can do any good (harm). Surfactants called stickers are mixed with the herbicide so the chemicals do not just wash off. I think there is a lot left to learn about the microbes interaction with the cuticle and how stickers work. At least there's a lot more I could learn about it.

Plus one of the tried and true techniques we use is to spray surfactants around quite liberally. The cuticle of the plant is generally unharmed as neither cutan (hydrocarbon polymer) nor cutin (a polyester polymer...what, you thought we invented it) are particularly soluble to them.

Ammonia is a base, but so is simple "neat" soap and many surfactants (although surfactants range down to a pH of 3.6). At the dilution used for household ammonia, pH 12, 1 Tbsp per gallon simply isn't significant in terms of alkalinity or solubility of wax.

It's in the mix as a nitrogen source, which it is,

Solutions of either detergents or ammonia, or both, will kill plants if used exclusively, but nobody's suggesting that. Neither kill from cuticle damage, but instead from dehydration of the plant and root burn respectively.

Dan - I tried Jerry Baker's stuff back in the 90's, yes, including the shoes with spikes on them to "aerate" the soil. I did that once, at night, and had enough of that. I came to this forum a year ago and have done what guys like morpheus and dchall recommend. As an unbiased observer, I recommend that you return/trash the Jerry Baker book and do what the guys in this forum recommend. My lawn looks great as a result of following their recommendations. The Baker stuff is impractical for a lawn of any size, even if the recipes were effective.

If you decide you want the best lawn in the neighborhood without all that much work, get yourself a soil test from Logan labs and let these guys help you out. Good luck!

>>Dan - I tried Jerry Baker's stuff back in the 90's, yes, including the shoes with spikes on them to "aerate" the soil.

Oh, I saw those once. And had a mental image of tripping and impaling myself on them. I can't imagine how you explain that one at the emergency room.

>>The Baker stuff is impractical for a lawn of any size, even if the recipes were effective.

Credit where credit is due. It did get us thinking about surfactants, although they've been used in lawn and garden care for decades. We just hadn't thought about home available surfactants for it.

thank you to all who helped - sorry I have not gotten back until now but just wanted to say thank you to all - the tonic that was described at the top that the person was so kind to have listed is it ok to use this anytime or should I wait until we start growing here in ohio - I guess I will just use my new book as a chair leveler!! - I have always looked to this forum for help and again it has not failed me - happy easter to all

>>3 ounces of liquid seaweed, 3 ounces of milk, 3 ounces of molasses, and 3 ounces of baby shampoo all added to a hose end sprayer with water to fill it.

That one? Theoretically, any time the ground isn't frozen. Although I wouldn't overdo usage of it, either. Let's call a realistic limit a maximum of 16 ounces of each item per thousand square feet per year, although that's a generalization.

Too much seaweed with actually halt root growth. Too much milk is harmless. Too much molasses causes over-growth of bacterial mass and reduces oxygen levels in the soil. Too much shampoo (which is way higher than I just quoted) will inject large amounts of sodium into your soil, plus keep wiping the deck of soft-bodied insects.

If you haven't had a soil test, I'd get one. Tuning that will be far more effective than the above recipe, although said recipe can give you that last 1% of performance on a lawn already given the proper resources from the soil and currently functioning at 99%.

it works ,i have used his lawn tonic formula, and, had good result.