"Rod Craddock" wrote in message
...
"George.com" wrote in message
...
I recently had an interesting experience with liquid compost and am
wondering if anyone has an explaination for it.

On 2 occasions this autumn some roses in the garden were infested
with
aphids and thrips (and maybe mites) and what I think is black spot.
On both
occasions I sprayed the top and bottom of the leaves with a general
liquid
compost (a combination of organic material including seaweed but
nothing
made to a specific recipe). Within 1-2 weeks most of the aphids and
thrips
were dead or had migrated and the black spot seemed to be less
prolific.

I thus deduced either:
a. there was some good biological activity being transferred to the
roses
which knocked out the pests
b. I drowned the bugs with enough liquid and the black spot somehow
solved
itself or didn't in fact recede
c. the smell of the compost (rank) was enough to drive off the pests

Liquid composts are reputed to be beneficial to plants however I am
not sure
whether I am a beneficiary of this or some other plausible
explaination.

It's quite common to be alarmed by large populations of aphids in
spring. At that point one of 2 things happen.
(1) You wait a few days and natural predators take the aphids.
(2) You spray and a few days later the aphids are gone or much
reduced. You breath a sigh of relief and say "wow, that spray was good
stuff".

As for the 'black spot', some nutrient deficiencies on roses
particularly Potassium can look a bit like black spot, so I'm guessing
your brew at least partially corrected that.

I prefer to think the latter that it killed them Rod as I have not seen any
sign of predators (it is autumn here). The smell was bad enough to kill the
*******s anyhow. Yes, it may not have been black spot. It looked like black
spot so it was black spot for me however I know nowt about roses so to an
expert it may be lack of P.

rob