2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Everyone who grows tomatoes is well aware of how much tomato tops and leaves accumulate after pinching their favorite crop, and even more so after harvesting! However, you should not rush to quickly send a heap of unnecessary greens to the trash - it will be very useful for other summer cottages, because you can prepare both a very effective fertilizer and an excellent natural insecticide from it
Liquid fertilizer
Tomato tops and stepchildren with leaves are excellent raw materials for the preparation of an effective liquid "green" fertilizer that can generously saturate all those in need of this valuable crop element with nitrogen! And it is not so difficult to prepare such an infusion for dressing: a previously prepared barrel is filled about two-thirds of its total volume with fresh tops in combination with weeded weeds (while the share of tops in the green mass should not exceed 25%), after which is poured into the raw material sent to the top with water. The top of the barrel is covered with a film, which, in turn, is fixed with twine, and several holes are made in this film - they will be needed for proper gas exchange.
If it is warm outside, then a useful "brew" will be ready for use in a week and a half. However, before proceeding with root feeding of plants, each liter of the mixture is preliminarily diluted in ten liters of water. It is quite acceptable to carry out such a solution and spraying on the leaves - in this case, the effect will be even better!
Mulch
Used tomato raw materials are perfect for use as mulch - well-dried tops are usually covered with soil surfaces in the aisles of other vegetable crops. No worse, it has proven itself when mulching the trunks of various fruit trees or shrubs.
Tomato mulch is endowed not only with the ability to retain moisture in the soil much longer, allowing a noticeable reduction in the number of irrigations, but also the ability to inhibit the growth of weeds, thereby freeing hardworking summer residents from too frequent and tedious loosening and weeding. And after some time, such mulch, rotting, will enrich the soil with the most diverse valuable compounds!
Ash
And if you burn the tomato tops, you can get incredibly useful ash, which will be an excellent top dressing for any other plants, because it will enrich them with a truly incredible amount of trace elements necessary for their full development! In addition, such ash can be introduced into the ground without the slightest fear when preparing the beds for sowing as early as next season!
Compost
Do not forget that tomato tops are always suitable for composting: in this case, the tops are placed in a container and overlaid with earth, and in order to speed up the decay process, it is recommended to spill the raw material with a solution of urea or mullein - this approach will allow you to get ready-made compost in a year! By the way, this is the only option in which it is possible without any fear to put into operation even tops affected by late blight (although in this case it is recommended to “marinate” it in a compost heap for three years) - in all other cases, only healthy raw materials should be taken!
Fight for pests
And, of course, tomato tops will always come in handy in the fight against pests, because it contains solanine, which is poisonous for harmful insects! To prepare a spray solution, four kilograms of fresh raw materials are thoroughly crushed and poured with ten liters of warm water. First, this mixture is infused for about three to four hours, and then placed on the stove and boiled for about half an hour under a lid on a low flame. The cooled broth is filtered, carefully diluted with water in a ratio of 1: 4 and forty to fifty grams of soap is added to it for better adhesion. Spraying with such a composition helps to cope with various leaf-eating caterpillars, carrot flies, sawflies, as well as the Colorado potato beetle, spider mites or aphids. And this kind of processing is carried out both before flowering and after it, in compliance with a five- or seven-day interval.
Without a doubt, with the right approach, tomato tops can be an excellent assistant in the fight against pests and in obtaining a wonderful environmentally friendly harvest!
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