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http://www.pinetumproducts.co.uk
It’s based in Gloucestershire and run by an organic guy similar in enthusiasm to yourself.
The reason I went with these guys is that they had a lab analysis of what was in it and it looked far more useful than the American Azomite and the Seer Centre in Scotland (whose dust is marketed by Binn) didn’t have an analysis available. It’s particularly rich in the useful elements like potassium, calcium, magnesium and it seems to have pretty much every trace element under the sun.
Just got another 40kg delivered this week after finishing the trial bag of 20kg a week or so back.
If I had a hectare of land, I’d do some proper scientific trials, but to the naked eye it certainly seems to help and certainly doesn’t harm.
Used some on a trial bed by the house along with the spent tomato pot compost (huge organic content of root system) and planted shallots in it. They did very well once the cold March was over.
I put some more down on a few more beds a couple of weeks ago, including one with winter onions and garlic. I’ve done no scientific measurements, but all the young plants shot ahead in the week after putting the dust on top.
I’ve also just laid down some horse manure on top of rock dust on ground not dug since last spring. We’ll see how it gets on. Same on top of the asparagus and rhubarb.
I also put a small handful into the final pots of my tomatoes last summer, which was a mixture of John Innes Number Three and purchased well-rotted ‘farmyard manure’. No science done, but the final outcome was magnificent. I suspect lots of hot summer sunshine helped too though.
George
I started a ‘fresh manure’ heap about 5 weeks ago, filling a wire cage of 1.2m * 0.7m within 10 days courtesy of about 5 trips to the stables filling ‘council green waste bags’ about 1/3 full (all I could lift). I forked it about 3 times within the heap to test whether heat was still emerging. After the third time, the heat had mostly disappeared from the top 40cm, so I’ve just topped it up again yesterday. I can already tell the difference between the lower level collected 5 weeks ago vs the new fresh stuff – the older stuff is much blacker.
Yesterday, I got some ‘older stuff’ as the stables’ dogs weren’t out in the area of the mature stuff. Digging it was an educational experience: at the top, you still had the shape of round dung pellets, a bit lower down, the material was full of worms and even further down you had a darker more uniform sludge. We’ve put the mature stuff down under the fruit trees which are all relatively young.
Adrienne
I’ve done likewise to you this autumn and used spent haulms of healthy tomato/potato plants, allied to the spent compost to create a ‘bed’ which I covered with grass cuttings and then topsoil (which created a ditch around the bed).
I sowed winter onions and garlic in it and all are now showing healthy shoots under 2 weeks later.
Too early to say how super-duper it might be or not, but it certainly won’t kill your crops!!
My tomatoes barely ripened at all on the vine after about 8th September as we had 10 days of cold weather. Suddenly after a week of unusually warm weather at the start of October, I’ve had 10 tomatoes turn orange in the past week. Riesentraube, Black Cherry, Sub Arctic Plenty and Glacier.
They may all get culled this week as the forecast is for cold nights.
I’ve successfully ripened about 250 of 500 harvested green so far either indoors or sat in an outside boiler house. I guess if all else fails, the remainder will all have to be used green.
Susan
I noticed exactly the same thing this summer, so I dropped a Facebook message to The Garlic Farm, who I bought them from, to ask.
They told me that you can generate new Elephant Garlic from them, but it will take two years to get back up to full size. They also said they’d never tried eating them!!
My response to that was to put them in the bin!!