Hi all's! I was stumped as to what could be preventing my industrial -grade vermiculture tea from getting my plants to fly out of the ground! It turned out the local nursery had a bacterial infection in their tomatoes, but that still did not explain the beets that looked like they were planted from the 6-pack yesterday and not three months ago or the watermelon that was 2 inches long after 3 months or what have you... I thought it could be the Napa Valley pesticide presents delivered at night from across the creek... gotta get on that pony and ride it still, but I pulled up the beets and whadda ya know! Root Knots!
I was searching Soil Ph and Nematodes and found some articles that clarify things this thread would Value.
Nematode Life Cycles
Soil fertility, Texture, and Ph
In a nutshell, potassium , the K of NPK, is the best cell wall strengthener and therefore the critical buffer element for Nematode penetrations. They spread like crazy in sandy soil but overwinter better in fine soil.
Solarisation is just raising temperature, not using wavelengths so it looks like a heat process, cooking soil, is the best method I see besides potassium, water and nutrients to ride the season. Nematodes practically are roots themselves by the adult phase of their life-cycle, since they can literally blow roots up by growing faster than roots can, there may turn out to be some wierd border of absorption that can be exploited to kill them, or, maybe they can be false-triggered into their life-cycle before planting and then starved, they often have 4 metamorphosis states...
I am thinking about using my tumbling composter plus a rocket stove to batch process my soil, I use macrobins that have a yard of soil in them each and I want the Nematode Nemesis done with! Sheez, if I hadda grow things to eat at all, I would have starved!
Peace.
