An ORMUS Garden
by Barry Carter

This is the fourth year that I have grown a garden that has had sea water ORMUS added. I typically put about a cup of sea water precipitate on each ten by thirty foot section of my garden. The first two years I used precipitate that I made from Pacific Ocean water. The most recent two years I have used the Sea-Crop product.
Savior Seeds

In the current economic climate, I think that it is a good idea to save your seeds. Following are some examples of how saved seeds show increased production when their parent plants are given ORMUS from year to year.

BFD (Big Fun Dill)

This year (2008) I have some second year of ORMUS plants in my garden. Two of these plants are dill and cilantro. I noticed that they were growing a lot taller than last year (2007) so I looked up the typical size of these plants:
http://herbgardening.com/growingdill.htm

Dill grows to a height of 24 to 36 inches (60 - 90cm).

http://herbgardening.com/growingcilantro.htm

Cilantro / Coriander grows to a height of 18 to 24 inches (45 - 60cm).

My dill plants were probably a bit smaller than normal when they went to seed in August of 2007. Here is a picture of one of the largest of these plants from August 23, 2007:

This dill plant was only about a foot tall at the end of August.

When I measured the 2008 "volunteer" dill plants the four tallest were a bit over 52 inches (132 cm) and the average height was about 48 inches (122 cm). This is a foot taller than typical tallest plants. The following picture was taken on the Forth of July, 2008:

Big Dill on the Forth of July

As you can see in the image above, the dill flowers have not produced seeds yet. On August 11, 2008 I took some pictures of the same dill plants after the seed heads were fully formed. The following picture shows some of these plants with a four foot (122 cm) measuring stick next to one of them:

Big Dill on August 11

Around the first of August about half of the largest dill plants fell over after I watered them. I think they might have gotten too much water on the ground. Here is a picture with these fallen plants in the foreground:


Fallen Dill on August 11

You can see a picture of the seed head from one of the the dill plants below:
Dill Seed Head on August 11 (on half inch grid paper)

I do not intend to sell any of these seeds. I would not want to be accused of doing this just to get some dill dough.

Tall Cilantro

The cilantro is between 30 and 36 inches (76-92cm) in height. This is also about a foot taller than typical cilantro plants. Here is a picture with the cilantro in the foreground and the dill in the background:

Cilantro and Dill on July 5, 2008

I originally planted the cilantro in 2007. Below is a picture of the cilantro taken as it was seeding out on August 23, 2007:

As you can see this cilantro is probably less than a foot and a half tall.

All of the plants in the 2008 pictures above were "volunteer" plants that came from seeds that were grown on plants in my garden in 2007. I did not particularly save the seeds from 2007 but I did allow them to go to seed without harvesting all of them.

Below is a picture of the big dill on the right and the big cilantro on the far left:

An Explosion of Cilantro and Dill on the Forth of July

Notice the sunflower that is trying to outgrow the dill in the center next to the fence.

Squash: The Competition

On July 27, Dana Dudley sent me the following link to some pictures that her friend took of some Yellow Squash near Dunn, North Carolina. You can see these pictures at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/dana.dudley/YellowSquash?authkey=aqRhsWYXX1c

These squash plants were given some of the ACE brand ORMUS that Dana promotes on her RhinoEd.org web site. A couple weeks after Dana sent me the link to her Yellow Squash pictures I got to thinking about the volunteer Yellow Squash I had in my garden. So, I decided to take some pictures of it on July 27, 2008. Here is one of these pictures:


Seeing my picture made me realize that there was not a good way to tell how tall my Yellow Squash plant really was just by comparing it to the size of the plastic bucket.

I thought about this problem for a while and decided that I needed to show the height of my Yellow Squash plant next to a measuring device. So, on August 11, 2008 I took another picture with my four foot measuring device leaning against the tallest leaf of the squash:



As you can see in the picture above the tallest Yellow Squash leaf is 46.5 inches (118 cm.) tall.

I also took some pictures, on the same day, of the squash on the ground under the leaves:


And, below is another picture of the squash taken six days later (August 17, 2008):


As I mentioned earlier this Yellow Squash plant was a "volunteer" plant from seeds that came from my compost pile. I have had at least one Yellow Squash volunteer each year for the last two years. In the past I rarely took pictures of them since they were not this spectacular. Here are a couple of pictures I did find from August 23, 2007:

Notice how the squash in the foreground is dwarfed by the brocholli plant behind it.



I think that they all may have originated from some seeds that I purchased in 2004 or 2005. I generally save my seed packets for future reference and I found the packet pictured below for a "Yellow Squash":


If this really is where they came from, I have been using the wrong name and they should be called Early Prolific Straightneck Squash instead.

Lettuce Spray

I also planted a spray of assorted lettuce seeds. These included the following lettuce varieties Brune D'Hiver, Ruben's Red Romaine, Pirat Butter, Formidana and Simpson's Black Seeded lettuce from:

http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/product_details.asp?item_no=S11117

The Ruben's Red Lettuce is described as a "12-14 in. Hardy Annual" with "Deep burgundy, sweet and juicy savoyed leaves with an emerald-green base. A cool weather variety, so plant in early spring or late summer." As you can see below:


my Reuben's Red Lettuce was about 52 3/8 inches (133 cm.) tall on August 11, 2008. This is a bit clearer in the picture below:


The Formidana Lettuce is described as "12-14 in. leaf, 5-7 in. head Hardy Annual" with "Delightful, light green crisphead forms a small, compact, iceberg-type head with attractive, ruffled outer leaves. Becomes increasingly sweet and crunchy as it grows. Very vigorous and heat tolerant. Heads up best with cool fall temperatures." As you can see below, my Formidana Lettuce is not quite as formidible as the Reuben's Red Lettuce:

Formidana Lettuce on August 16, 2008

The Formidana Lettuce is only 50 inches (127 cm.) tall but lettuce leaf this topic and move on to the next plant.

EnORMUS Nuts?

Since I got the giant walnuts described at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/walnuts.htm

I have been wanting to grow my own giant nuts, so I ordered a couple of the "18 inch" Black Walnut seedlings from Raintree Nursery on June 1, 2006. As I was digging the holes where I wanted to plant these Black Walnut seedlings (on the same day), I noticed an incredible abundance of the white fillaments that are associated with mycorrhizal fungi as you can see in the image below:


On June 15, 2006 I took some pictures of mushrooms (which are the "fruit" of the mycorrhizal fungi) near where I planted one of the walnut trees. The first picture is of some mushrooms a couple feet southwest of where I planted the tree and the second picture is of some Agaricus Augustus mushrooms about ten feet northeast of where I planted the tree. Notice that I included my shoe into the pictures as a reference for the size of the mushrooms:




These mushrooms remain a common feature in my garden.

When I was working to protect Eastern Oregon forests, I did quite a bit of research and writing on the importance of mycorrhizal fungi for soil health. You can read some of what I wrote about this at:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/bmnfa/soil.htm

Arthur, who developed and sells the Sea-Crop product, also wrote quite a bit about the importance of mycorrhizal fungi to the health of plants and soil for his original web page. With his permission I have copied his earlier web page on this subject to:

http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/sea-crop.htm

I planted the seedlings on June 8, 2006. Here are pictures of the two seedlings:


Here is another picture of both seedlings showing their location in relation to each other:


The seedling on the left did not survive the first year. The mushrooms (illustrated above) were closest to the walnut seedling on the right.

You can see some of the early leaf growth on one of the two foot tall seedlings in the picture below taken on June 26, 2006:


These plants did not seem very hardy at first and one of them died before the end of the summer but the one that lived had a good leaf cover by September 23, 2006:


Notice the mushroom in the lower right corner of the picture above.

The winter of 2006/2007 was a bit hard on the walnut tree and it lost most of it's limbs by December 18, 2006 as you can see below:


But by April 30, 2007 the walnut tree was starting to show new signs of growth:


By August 23 of 2007 you can see it is doing quite well again:


More limbs survived the winter of 2007/2008 as you can see in the February 18, 2008 picture below:


Buds were just starting to form on the walnut tree when I planted the lettuce and other seeds around it on April 11, 2008 as you can see in the image below:


On June 10, 2008 we had a surprise late snow storm that collapsed the walnut tree as you can see in the picture below:


This freak snow storm also nearly burried the Reuben's Red Lettuce which is barely visible on the left side and along the bottom right in the picture above. When I first saw it, I thought the tree was a gonner but it sprang right back up as soon as I shook the snow off as you can see below:


By the Forth of July, 2008 the walnut tree was doing quite well and looked like it might be giving the sunflowers a run for the money:


In the picture above, the green metal fence post on the far left is 47.5 inches (121 cm.) tall as is the fence post behind the sunflower on the left.

By August 16, 2008 everything had gotten so lush that it was difficult to tell what is what:


On the left you can see the same fence post and to the right of that, toward the front, you can see the Formidana Lettuce at 50 inches (127 cm.) tall and, behind it, the 52 3/8 inches (133 cm.) tall Reuben's Red Lettuce. You can also see a couple other Formidana Lettuce plants which are over four feet tall. To the right of the tallest Formidana lettuce plant you can see a large sunflower. Just to the right of the large sunflower is the Black Walnut tree which was 70.5 inches (179 cm.) tall when this picture was taken.

Volunteer Sunflowers

The largest sunflower, in the picture above, is 90 inches tall and has a 15 inch flower head:


It was a volunteer plant from last year's seeds. The flower head on the 2008 sunflower above is an inch wider than the flower head of the largest sunflower I measured on August 23, 2007 below:


In ORMUS Problems

I mentioned earlier that there have been some problems that may be directly related to using ORMUS on the plants in my yard and garden.

The soil that has been treated with ORMUS is quite loose and aerated due to the presence of lots of earthworms, the mycorrhizal fungi and an abundance of beneficial bacteria. This loose soil apparently does not provide enough support for the roots of the sunflowers to keep them from falling if they lean too far over while reaching for the sunlight. One of the sunflowers fell over on August 3, 2008 right after I watered that part of the garden. You can see a picture of the root wad of this sunflower below:

Notice the incredible abundance of the white mycorrhizal fungi fibers attached to every root.

I think that something similar may have allowed some of the big dill in the picture at the top of this web page to fall over.

Apricots

Another problem might also be related to the application of ORMUS to plants. When ORMUS is applied to older trees, their limbs may not have developed the strength to support the extra weight of the fruit or nuts that they produce. This was apparent in the summer of 2008 when an older apricot tree had a particularly abundant crop of apricots after being given sea water precipitate ORMUS for only the previous four years of it's twenty plus year life. Here is a closeup image of the broken branches of this apricot tree taken on August 9, 2008:


Here is an overview of the entire tree taken on the same day:


Notice the dog across the fence in the lower right corner of the picture above? This is one of the dogs that guards my neighbor's apricot tree. Their tree did not have as many apricots on it as my tree did. Here is a picture of my neighbor's tree taken on July 27, 2008:


One reason that their tree did not have as many apricots may be that my guard cats did a better job of keeping squirrels from stealing the apricots than their guard dogs did. In the lower right picture below you can see one of my guard cats:


Here is another picture of them guarding the apricot tree in 2007:


Though he looks quite peaceful in the picture above I recently got a video of the smaller guard cat attacking the dogs across the fence. I am not sure that this is related to ORMUS even though I do put the Sea-Crop in the cat's water.

In the closeup below is a picture of my neighbor's tree taken on July 27, 2008; you can see how sparse their apricots were:


I also have a closeup photo of the apricots on one branch of my tree. This photo was taken on August 9, 2008:


I don't think that the squirrels, cats and dogs are entirely responsible for the difference in the weight of the branches between my tree and my neighbor's tree, though. In the months before the apricots ripened on both trees, I took periodic pictures of several representative apricots picked from the north side of each tree. Three of these pictures are below:




The grid on the background is half inch square.

As you can see, the apricots from my tree have been consistently larger throughout their growing cycle.

Summary

Though all of the plant stories above suggest major improvements when sea water ORMUS is added to the soil, this evidence cannot truly be truly called scientific. In each case at least one component of the scientific process is missing. The apricot results may be due to different species of tree since I do not know that these trees came from the same source. These results may have been skewed by the squirrels or the positions of the respective trees in relation to sunlight.

We don't know for sure if the different squash plants are the same species and they were grown across the continent from each other. The plants in North Carolina were not even measured.

The before and after pictures of the cilantro and dill are from different years. Also, I am not really sure that they don't typically reach heights greater than they did in my garden.

The same is true for the lettuce heights. I am not sure what others are getting with these plant breeds.
I do know that there are taller sunflower plants with larger sunflowers but I am not sure how the breed of sunflower I have compares to the breeds that get the largest.

All of these issues and more need to be accounted for in controlled scientific research.

I do know that the food from my garden and trees sure tastes good. I also know that I feel really good after I eat it.