Mission Endure #79: Mississippi Mud
I am a long time follower of David the Good and his The Survival Gardening Channel with David the Good YouTube Page. He has to be one of the most prolific YouTube posters I follow. His posts are always very educational with some humor and original music thrown in. David is also a Christian with 10 kids. David writes gardening books in whatever spare time he has when he is not doing YouTube videos. One of my favorite books of his is called Compost Everything.
My favorite video of David’s is called, “How to Make Free Liquid Fertilizer From Almost Anything With This Ancient Method.” That is quite a catchy title and very helpful with the demise of the fertilizer industry lately. Here is David’s video:
I was inspired enough when I saw it 2 weeks ago that I decided to brew some of my own. I filled a plastic trash can half way with grass clippings, some leaves from last fall, garden scraps, weekds that I had pulled a couple of weeks ago, and a few other things and let it sit in the hot, sunny weather for the last 2 weeks. What I ended up with was a disgusting trash can full of vigor for my garden. Two weeks have gone by and I thought I would do my first application of fertilizer on this year’s garden this morning. I popped the lid off of the plastic trash can that I used to make my fertilizer and I was immediately happy that my wife wasn’t home for an hour or two. It smelled so bad that I am sure it will work well on the garden. It pretty much smelled like sewer water, which I think is the goal. I live about 15 miles from the Mississippi River, so I am going to call my home brew, “Rick’s Mississippi Mud.” So, I watered most of the plants with it. We will be harvesting the Garlic in a couple of weeks and we are still harvesting a few Strawberries, so I didn’t water either of them with my Mississippi Mud. I am excited to see how it perks up my garden this year. I have never fertilized much in the past, but using the Minibeds on Plastic method I can tell a few of the Minibeds were losing their productivity after a couple of years of using the same area to grow. I believe David’s fertilizer concept will inspire my garden to produce well again this year. Here is a photo of my Mississippi Mud after I siphoned enough juice off the top to fertilize the entire garden:
The compost tea smelled bad, but I’ll bet it does a great job kickstarting the garden this year
It is basically just a strong compost tea. After I took this photo I filled the garbage can up with water again and in about 2 more weeks I’ll have another batch of Mississippi Mud ready for another round of vigor. Here are some photos of the current state of the garden as of this morning.
This garden this morning from our deck
Strawberries in the foreground are June Bearing and are about done for the year. Strawberries in the upper left are Ever Bearing and will provide Strawberries all Summer.
The Garlic is almost ready to harvest. It will be done in the next couple of weeks
The Bush Beans and the Pole Beans are going well
This week I planted some Korean Gold Sweet Potatoes, Some pumpkin Yam Sweet Potatoes and a few homegrown Tomatoes. Everything will get kicked into high gear after the Mississippi Mud application. I’ll provide some more photos in a couple of weeks to document the science exoperiment.