San Pedro Cactus, Trichocereus Pachanoi, Peruvianus, Peruvian Torch cacti

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Growing organically smells like cow poop

There are dairy farms just 1/4 mile from my house. The farm shown here has a 4 cubic yard dump truck. They load it with a front end loader, drive it over to my place and dump it.

For weeks thereafter clouds of flies try to get into my house. Eventually that stops. You have to allow the poop to sit, rot, and age for a year before it is suitable to use in soil.

But if it is several months old I mix the cow poop through screens with fresh cut grass, mulched leaves, 10% local soil and worm compost. The later contains lots of red worms.

These mixed piles will decompose in weeks or months into excellent compost for use in potting soil.

Fresh cut spring grass is very high in nitrogen. In front of the wheelbarrow is a pile of mulched leaves collected last fall. Leaves + grass + local dirt + cow poop — sifted through a screen to mix them — are the ingredients of my compost.

Worm compost is an essential part of organic soil. I feed them vegetable scraps--meat would work but since it attracts ants you'll end up with an insane ant city. Don't go there. No meat, no cheese, no fats.

So vegetables, coffee grounds, tea bags, bread, etc. are excellent worm food. I make a garbage can full of mulched (chopped up) leaves to use for worm bedding.

The worms eventually digest even the leaves to create a rich black humus to add to the potting soil. I sift it through a 1/2" screen so that it has lots of worms in it.

Dump the sifted material with worms into the cow poop compost piles and the wormies will spread out into it digesting as they go.

Worms are great for soil!

These organic products will cost you about $150.
ThermX (Yucca extract--steroid saponin), Maxicrop (sea weed extract--minerals, growth hormones, cytokinin, auxins, vitamins, and enzymes), Bio-Hume (humic acid), Humax (humic acid), Root Growth Enhancer ( humic acid, endomycorrhiza and ectomycorrhiza) and fish emulsion (nitrogen source).

You mix these in a bucket with non-chlorinated (well) water. Pour into a hose end sprayer like the one shown. Feed the cactus in the evening when they begin to open their stoma for the night. I spray both the soil and the entire plant surface for folar feeding.

The results are spectacular when compared to chemical fertilizers. The plants get super healthy looking, brilliantly colored and firm. These products feed the soil so that the microbial life living symbiotically with the plant roots is fed. Healthy soil means stronger, faster growing plants with no disease problems.