Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Been brewing compost tea as a foliar spray for ap and for the soil garden. Splashed come dipel in the mix to see what affect if any it has. From what I've read compost tea gets the bacteria working to help mineralize the compost and rock dust, salt etc. The increase in bacteria has the added effect of repeling insects on the plants. They don't like a lot of micro activity on there food. And as dipel is basicly a BT bacteria it may naturaly be present in compost tea anyway.

Has anyone used AP water as a foliar spray and if so did it have any effect on insects.

I haven't even tried but from all the video links in the forum it also adds a lot of absorbable nutrients directly to the folage. My plants were poor last year and I think it made them even more suseptable to insects to the point I wanted to net them in completely and still may. It may just be my area but it looks like others in similar areas are able to do it without chemicals. Also curious as what the effect to the tea garlic and capsium would have.

I still have problems some in my ap system but things have been getting better I think as I've been adding more iron and potassium.

Weakened or deficient plants are always way more prone to disease and bug attack.

I've not tried using AP water as a spray for my dirt plants.

I've not yet tried any garlic or capsium sprays. Do be ware with garlic that it is probably not good for bees either so don't spray flowers or when bees are active.

I'm gonna have to pull out the thuricide (liquid form of BT similar to dipel) again tonight as I'm seeing more little caterpillars eating holes in my tomato plants.

I'm liking the cool spring weather we have been having this week, it is giving my late planted cool weather crops another chance for a while though it is keeping my water temps too cool for the tilapia to eat.

Only problem I see with dipel and its liquid form is bacteria in a bottle. How long does it last. My first batch of dipel + seasol didn't have a great effect. But now when I use more out of the same container it seems to be doing the job. Could be because the bacteria(BT) has had more time to reproduce, making the solution stronger.

The common thought was that the bacteria in Dipel dies if it is sitting in a bottle....but I have made big batches before, and used it over several weeks, and it still appears to work.

Ive got so many plants now that a big batch of dipel is used all at once lol

I mixed up mine in a 10ltr container with seasol. Think the bacteria might use the seasol as energy to reproduce.