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haskins2001

Jerry Baker

haskins2001
15 years ago

In his garden tip book he refers to Thatch Buster, does anyone know exactly what it is or where it can be purchased?

Comments (5)

  • philes21
    15 years ago

    I know you can make it yourself......I use a variation of the mix, that I find quite helpful. The operative ingredients are the beer and the sugar. My belief (although I do not know this) is that he's changed up the sugar source, because in the last few years I've listened to him, he's recommending molasses, rather than soda pop. More concentrated (thus cheaper) sugar.

    In any event, here's the recipe, as I use it, for an acre lot (your lot may be smaller, and you may want to wind down the sizes. Absolutely, precise measurement is not required).

    Into a five gallon paint bucket, I put:

    a. 4 or 5 cans of beer (and if I have any wine left over, I just pour in the wine).

    b. 4 litres soda pop (not diet: you want the sugar. FWIW, grape and strawberry have more sugar than cola). K-Mart's cheap 3 liter of soda is perfect.

    c. 2 gallons of household ammonia.

    d. 1/2 cup of cheap dish soap: the pink stuff off of KMart's shelves. Try your darndest to get one that does NOT say 'antibacterial'.

    e. A gallon of Gatorade (or whatever that big jug of it is, at the grocery store).

    Mix it all together, and run it through your hose-end sprayer (The weed B Gone sprayer is perfect for it) at 4oz. to the gallon. Spray everything to the point of runoff, (not drowning) and move along, spray something else.

    But spray the lawn, the flowers, the shrubs, everything. They'll all love it.

    The sugar is good for the little critters in the soil: they live on sugars, and you just gave them some.

    The beer has enzymes, which is how it got to be beer. These same enzymes (along with the sugar) operate to destroy thatch in the lawn.

    The ammonia is just nitrogen. A little snack for the lawn and leaves.

    The Gatorade provides 'trace nutrients', such as zinc, etc. Athletes need these nutrients, in small traces, and so do your plants and lawn.

    The dish soap makes everything else work well together, and destroys surface tension on the plant leaves, so the mixture is absorbed more easily. Unless you're a chemist: in that case, the dish soap is a 'surfactant', and makes everything work well.

    I spray my lawn about twice a year. Sometimes three times. It's not a HUGE amount of anything, and won't take the place of a regular fertilizer application. But for a little snack, for a little appetizer to keep the little critters in the lawn doing what they do best, I find it quite useful. As well as cheap.

  • reelfanatic
    15 years ago

    Wow! Now I've heard everything. Don't forget to dispose of that toxic paint can at an appropriate recycling center!

  • philes21
    15 years ago

    5 gallon paint bucket. They're orange, they're new (never had any paint in them) and they're a buck apiece at HD or Lowes. Very handy buckets to have around. And they're not hard to dispose of: the neighbors borrow them, and they never seem to come back.

  • bpgreen
    15 years ago

    If you're really cheap and know somebody with a cat (or some cats) ask them if they get cat litter in plastic buckets. They'll be happy to give you buckets for free because they take up so much room in the trash.

  • decree1002_gmail_com
    13 years ago

    I want a awsome lawn this year,bigger tomatos as well,more strawberry..