lisa Bud

Thank you Dr. RedHawk!  We made your horse tail tea preparation and it stopped our Cedar Apple Rust problem dead in its tracks.  We needed to spray a couple of times with it, but it saved our apple trees this year.

We cannot thank you enough.  

We will be making your other preparations in the next year and will report back with any observations, feedback, or results.

Hi Rez,

Sorry to be away so long and not reply before now.

I found the recipe in Dr. Bryant RedHawk's  post on making biodynamic concoctions:

https://permies.com/t/75940/Redhawk-methods-making-biodynamic-preparations

I've only made the anti-fungal horse tail mix so far, but will eventually prioritize making all the other recipes.  Again the horse tail preparation worked remarkably well and completely cured/prevented the Cedar Apple Rust this year.  I will update in future years to confirm if it keeps working well on my land and trees.  I used horse tail I bought from a man on eBay as I did not have any locally (that I know of).  I followed the recipe exactly.  Good luck and I hope this helps!

If Dr. RedHawk happens to see this post, THANK YOU!  I cannot express how grateful we are for your sharing your knowledge and wisdom.


Copied and Pasted from Dr. RedHawk's making biodynamic preparations post:

So now we have gone through the main preparations but there is one more, preparation that can be made and used for disease control and it works pretty well for me.

Casurina tea (horse tail tea):
This is made with Casuarina equisetifolia or Australian pine tree  and once again we have some schools that use the horse tail herb Equisetum instead.
When you start looking at the chemical make up of these two entirely different ingredients, they have similar makeup.
Both are silica rich, both have many of the same vitamins and minerals in the parts we want to use.
They are and can be used together or separately to make this preparation and you will get equal results with either.

You need 1 kg of either Casurina "leaves" or Equisetum leaves.
10 L of spring water or tap water that has had all the chlorine removed.
A large cooking vessel and a heat source.
This preparation is very much like the Valerian prep. you make a tea bag put in the pot, add the water and bring it to a boil.
For this preparation you want to boil the tea bag for at least 10 minutes before turning off the heat to let it cool to room temperature.
The liquid is diluted 10 to 1 (water to tea) and sprayed on the soil, plants, tree trunks and once again this is going to help control fungal diseases.
This one works on all the fruit trees. (if you have cedar rust this one will take care of the problem, especially if used while the disease is in the earlier stages).

I moved to a new area and did not know Cedar Apple Rust even existed.  Two years ago I planted multiple varieties of apple trees.  I paid no attention to CAR resistance when picking my varieties because I did not know about CAR.  My yard is surrounded by cedars so I cannot avoid CAR by removing the neighboring cedars.

The first year all the apple trees were hit by Cedar Apple Rust to varying extents, most completely infected.  Even the resistant varieties (chosen by dumb luck) were affected.  

This year I followed Bryant RedHawk's formula for a horsetail brew that you use as an anti-fungal spray on fruit trees.  It worked astonishingly well.  Even the varieties that are wholly susceptible to CAR were saved.  

At the beginning of the season, I was late in applying the spray, and some infection had already started.  There were orange spots on almost all the trees, again with some more affected than others depending on their natural resistance.

The horsetail spray stopped the CAR dead in its tracks.  All new growth was clear for a few weeks and the trees were thriving.  CAR started up again a bit later, and a second spraying with the horsetail brew finished it off.  I did not have another problem this year.

I will continue to use this formula going forward every year, and hopefully I will continue to have the same miraculous results.  Last year I was planning to remove the highly susceptible apple trees and replace them with resistant varieties.  Now I'm going to wait and see.  The apple trees should start producing fruit in the next year or two.  I'm very curious to see if the horsetail spray will allow for harvest even from the most susceptible cultivars.