Pine And Spruce Needles Are A Good Fertilizer For Plants And An Excellent Pesticide

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

The needles of pine and spruce are known to most readers mainly for their medicinal properties, which are well studied and widely used in medical practice. According to well-known herbalists in the country, with the help of pine needles, up to 2/3 of all diseases, including oncological ones, can be cured today. However, the needles, as experience shows, are capable of more, including can serve a person in his fight against pests and diseases, in increasing soil fertility and plant nutrition to enhance their growth and development.

The most effective results of using pine and spruce needles are known in the fight against pests and diseases of fruit and berry crops: apple moth, moth on currants and gooseberries, weevils on raspberries, etc. In all these cases, it is enough to take 1-1.5 kg of needles, insist it in 10 liters of hot water, cool, strain and use a sprayer to process trees and bushes, and it is best to first the trunks, then the branches and then the green crown. Such processing of trees and shrubs is advisable at the beginning of their flowering and 2-3 more times with breaks for a week.

× Gardener's handbook Plant nurseries Stores of goods for summer cottages Landscape design studios

The experience of using needles against aphids and suckers is also very effective, and they take 2 kg of needles per 10 liters of water and insist for a week, keeping the infusion for about 7 days in a dark place and stirring daily. Before use, the infusion is diluted to a ratio of 1: 3 or 1: 5 in water.

Both pine and spruce needles give good results in the fight against cruciferous flea on salads, cauliflower and a number of root crops (radishes, turnips, radishes, rutabagas, etc.). Moreover, the plants are either sprayed with a solution of infusion in water in a ratio of 1: 5, or a mixture of needles with water in a ratio of 1: 1 is introduced into the aisles of plants. There is also a positive experience of using pine needles in the fight against the Colorado potato beetle on potatoes.

It should be noted that spraying with a solution of needles of fruit and berry and vegetable crops can be carried out both in the morning and in the evening, avoiding only periods of dew and rain. In order not to waste the solution, you can add 30 g of laundry soap to it. According to my observations, some gardeners add an ash extract to the solution of needles, which, in combination with soap, eliminates the possibility of acidification of the soil that occurs when using needles. The addition of chopped coniferous branches and cones to the infused mixture of needles and water by individual gardeners, according to available information, only weakens the insecticidal properties of solutions.

In recent years, I have also gained some experience in the use of pine and spruce needles when growing tomatoes, strawberries and potatoes. In the first case, we added ash to a mixture of pine and spruce needles, boiled the mixture in water, filtered, and then treated 10 tomato bushes with a solution having a ratio of 1: 5. In doing so, we managed to induce them to grow more intensively and eliminate the developmental lag. What is important, the treated bushes bloomed earlier and more amicably than everyone else and did not hurt at all, and the yield on them was greater than on untreated bushes.

But, perhaps, most of all we were pleased with strawberries and potatoes, when planting which, in the first case, a mixture of needles with sand, ash and compost was used in an equal ratio, and in the second - a mixture of needles, bark, ash and compost in the same ratio, and on In a strawberry bed, the mixture was embedded in the soil of the upper layer, and when planting potatoes, it was applied under the tubers and on them in a volume of about 1 liter per bush. As it turned out, strawberry bushes, being in such soil and having enough nutrition and moisture, did not have pests and diseases, they bloomed faster than others and yielded almost 1.5 times more than before. At the same time, the berries differed not only in their large size, but also had some particularly pleasant taste.

However, the most surprising was the potatoes, the planting tubers of which were affected by scab. When digging up the first of its bushes, we were surprised to note that not only was there a scab on any of the tubers, but even any of its very tenacious sclerotia. The harvest of the grown tubers was also quite good, although the weather that year was not very pleasing.

The well-known experienced gardener L. Rendyakov obtains excellent results when using pine needles. In his practice, he covers the planting of onions with coniferous spruce branches, and after removal of spruce branches after 2-3 weeks, the top layer of soil is well mulched with needles, due to which the entire period of onion growing the soil retains looseness, nutritional value and moisture, does not have weeds and protects plantings from diseases and pests … As a result of all this, from 1 kg of seedlings, the yield of full-fledged onions is up to 40 kg, and for about 4 years and regardless of the weather.

× Notice board Kittens for sale Puppies for sale Horses for sale

Known from the press and the experience of the skilled gardener V. Shchelkov, who uses needles mixed with sawdust for fumigating the potatoes stored in the cellar with smoke. Such processing of the cellar is carried out for about 0.5 hours, and monthly, until the end of the storage period. At the same time, potatoes not only do not rot, but also retain their properties well.

From all of the above, it can be seen that the needles effectively serve not only as a healer of the garden and vegetable garden, but also as a fertilizer for soil and plants. This is explained by the fact that the needles contain, first of all, a very rich complex of physiologically active substances; it also contains many chemical elements: calcium, magnesium, manganese, copper, cobalt, zinc, etc.

Of course, there are also obvious opponents of the use of needles in areas, indicating the harmfulness of removing green needles from trees and the possibility of terpenes, ethers, etc. getting into the water and soil from it. Practice does not confirm this, since the doses of removing needles from the forest and introducing it garden and vegetable garden are very small, and between the properties of green and fallen needles, scientists have not found a noticeable difference. Hence, it is quite possible to do with fallen needles.