Nature's Curator

The six week trial with nature's curator is over and I can't say that I'm particularly impressed with it. The Black Krim tomato which was very sick is now healthy and has two fruits on it but I'm not sure that two tomatos on a plant is particularly great. The money maker tomato has more fruit than that but is smaller than the untreated plants and has a few less fruits. The broccoli has recovered from the slug attacks but has not yet budded whereas the untreated broccoli is on to its second budding already. All the plants were in the same sort of conditions and for the tomatoes they were in the same planter as the untreated ones. To be honest I seem to have more success with just the seaweed tea rather than NC and the tea. My comment is that if you have sickly plants then this stuff could save them but at $80 a litre (which admittedly dilutes to 100 litres) it could be an expensive way to go. Probably a better idea to make sure that your soil is healthy and contains plenty of compost, is mulched well and you feed the plants regularly.
On the upside my strawberries are still fruiting well but I know that next year I will plant a lot more of them as I don't seem to get enough for a proper feed all at once, especially when the kids go out and help themselves every day.
My cucumbers all seem to be the small pickling type, which is a bit of a disappointment but they are yummy raw and in the next few days I will have enough to pickle a couple of jars. The Courgettes in the barbecue are just coming into flower and there looks to be plenty of fruit coming. I ate all the spinach last week and I even had a feed of silverbeet (chard) at last. No sign of fruit on the peppers yet but I have a couple of healthy plants. The potatoes are about ready to lift and the spring onions are doing well. I lifted three large white onions which grew from one that sprouted in the pantry and they were delicious.
I had a bit a problem the other day after some really strong winds. One of my Tomato plants fell over and snapped the stake at ground level. The stem of the plant was creased so I put in a tripod to hold up the plant and mulched the bottom 20cm or so of it, seems ok so far. I have planted some more potatoes, some in a bucket and some in the square foot garden. I will hopefully have some more planted in the next few days. To be perfectly honest I think my best crop has been marigolds, which I only planted to keep the nasties away but I have been able to cut flowers almost every day.
A friend told me that he has a greenhouse that is surplus to requirements and all I have to do is take it away and its mine. I just need to borrow a trailer now and hopefully I will be able to continue growing right through the winter. I also met someone else who has a greenhouse for which he bought a small solar panel that is sufficient to run a heater. That looks the way to go. A place to hide from the kids in the wintertime!!

What's happening in the boxes?

The last three days of warm weather and showers has made a real difference in the gardens. My rubbish bin full of potatoes has gone mad with the plants at least 40 cm above the top of the bin now. I hope they flower soon or I may have to tie them up to passing planes. The cucumber plants have doubled in size but no sign of budding yet. I have enough lettuce and mesclun to feed an army this week. Still not much hope of getting the kids eating it though. The barbecue and wicker basket are full of first leaves - always a difficult thing for me to realise that I have to hold off weeding as I will probably pull out the things I want. The earth gems look very lush and the tomatoes are getting lovely thick stems and a few buds. The only difference I have noticed with the Nature's Curator plants so far is that one of the tomato plants budded a few days before the others but other than that there is no change. In fact the unsprayed broccoli looks a bit bigger than the sprayed one although the slug battered one is picking up. But early days yet.
I have just thinned my pot of oregano, and I think there will be baby beetroot for tea this week. The garlic and onions keep plugging away.
In the square foot garden I have sprouting spinach, quite large calendula, peas that need staking today, chilli that is looking well (if much smaller than everybody else's I know), lush sage and a rapidly thickening tomato. On the down side there is still no sign of the silverbeet, about half of the carrot seeds did not germinate and I have a feeling that some of that 'grass' I pulled out of the spring onions may not have been grass at all. And no green bits in the courgette square.
A friend saw my motley collection of pots, buckets, kettle, recycling bin (shush don't tell the council they gave me two) nail boxes and home made planters and came up with a really good idea. She went to the Warehouse and bought some nice looking square buckets for less than $2 each. She has filled these with compost and put in seedlings of various herbs and veg from her thinnings. These will become her Christmas presents to her family. Very green and encouraging I thought.

Nature's Curator

I was approached last week by a company called Nature's Curator. Having read some of this blog they wanted me to test out their product. Yesterday, I received a small bottle of this liquid which is diluted and sprayed onto your plants. It only takes 10ml to mix with a litre and they state that it is completely organic. This stuff is not a fertilizer nor a pesticide but is supposed to stimulate both growth and resistance. They have asked me to perform a six week trial complete with photos. As well as giving them the information that they need I will also be logging results here. Yesterday I sprayed two tomato plants (one the Black Krim with which I have so many problems and the other a moneymaker which is the same size now as the others in my deck planter; and two broccoli plants, one the same size as the other in my square foot garden and the second a little larger but much abused by slugs). No change this morning - but I really didn't expect results quite so quickly, hehe!
I am interested to see if this product will work as claimed and you can be sure that you will get an honest review here. If anybody has other products that they would like to have reviewed I am happy to do so but with the warning that I will be completely honest and I refuse to endorse anything that does not live up to expectations. Bear in mind too that this blog is about organic gardening so I don't want to try any chemical solutions.