Orient Express in Organic Soil

Today 12 Orient Express seeds were planted into peat/worm castings/pumice. Watered with aloe, Bio-Ag's VAM and Ful-Power.

They'll later be moved into what is essentially CC's soil mix: sphagnum peat, rice hulls, worm castings, and compost. Minerals etc include glacier dust, basalt, sulpomag, gypsum, fish meal, crab meal, oyster shell, kelp meal, neem meal, and biochar (pre-soaked in compost tea). They'll be watered with aerated compost tea and botanical brews. This mix is designed to be reused indefinitely, top dressed with mulches and worm castings.

I've been using "bottled organic" nutrients for years but have decided to jump into the deep end of living soil. Updates will be posted here, but I will probably be asking a lot of questions in the Organic and Recycled Soil threads, too.

Bon voyage!!! Great strain!

Mayan, it is probably no surprise that your gardens have inspired my own choices. NepJam is coming up, too. PCK is likely next, though.

Enjoy the grow/fruit. I just finished the last bit of my OE, harvested over a year ago-
the high got cleaner, clearer, and more motivating with lengthening curing time.
It was a VB-leaning, 12-14 weeker.

saludos!

Good luck, can't wait to see what these genetics can do in a real living organic soil !
Peace and good vibes, HJ.

Mixed up 45 (or so) gallons of soil. It will "cook" in compost tea while the seedlings hatch and veg a bit. That is 15 gallons in that there kiddie pool, so I did it in 3 batches. Makes using a 5 gallon bucket as a measuring cup convenient. The adjuncts were measured in cups and fractions thereof.


Ingredients:

15 gallons sphagnum peat
15 gallons rice hulls/pumice
15 gallons worm castings/biodynamic compost

- basalt
- gypsum
- oyster shell flour
- glacier dust
- azomite
- greensand
- crab/crustacean meal
- kelp meal
- sulpomag
- neem meal

and for the possibly quacky hell of it, some paramagnetic rock.

Compost tea is brewing and tomorrow it will saturate biochar, which will be mixed in at about 7%.

Some of this stuff is redundant/not essential but was onhand from previous grows. The more the merrier, maybe. Irresponsible shotgun approach, maybe. It is the season for cleaning house though. I gave some old guano and cottonseed meal to the worm bins.

Dust protection was worn and highly advised while mixing this stuff!

Nice soil man. Those plants are gonna be happy in it for sure.
You cant go wrong with ACE and Orient Express (;

Good luck

Today I added compost tea diluted about 1:1 with rain water to the bio-char. The compost tea was: compost, worm castings, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, soluble fish, humic acid, and sucanat. Pump was an eco-air 3. It brewed for 36 hours. It was really, really loud. The pump was disappointingly noisy, but I have used enough pumps in my life to know that a quiet one is pretty rare and very expensive. What really surprised me was the air... The bubbles themselves were audible 2 floors up, like the whole house was a bong dimly hubbling and bubbling in the walls. I have a nice outbuilding where the tea can go in the future, but it is not heated. It is a bit of a conundrum until the nice weather comes.

I spread the residue from the brew onto outdoor vegetable beds. I would have liked to have incorporated it into the soil but the outdoor beds actually need it more.

When the tea was added to the biochar, it also burbled amazingly. This is stuff I will admit I purchased, though I have been looking into how to create it on my own. This was almost an impulse purchase at KIS Organics in Washington. I've long thought it would be interesting to play with "terra preta" and I have a friend in Hawaii who is deeply committed to the biochar lifestyle so it sounds like I should see how it works. I'm putting it into indoor and outdoor tests this year, side by side with stuff that will be almost exactly the same compost, tea, mineral wize but without the biochar. I know this might actually take a couple years to see do its thing but anyway, It's On.

Current flowering plants and close to their end. Most of them are just in stasis... ripening, sure, but nothing discernible is changing. The second hand on the clock bangs out it's score and I wonder when harvest and its associated campaign of grueling labor will drop.

On the other hand is a weird very sativa plant that i believe was called "jack herer" in the seed pouch it came from. Reading up on this strain indicates it can be about anything. But this plant shot up to about 40" while it was flowered at 12". It has long, whispy buds and lots of not really foxtails but like 2 calyxes on a long periscope. It has not shown any amber pistils while most of the other plants are 75%+

The others are F-13xF-113 and MVTFxGrape Krush.

I am eager to see what this "sativa" thing is gonna do, but also want to get the OE under the big light. I miss my old garden with proper veg room and an extra 600w in the flowering room.

Of course, I also used to have acres of comfrey and loads of room and wood debris to make biochar, and now live in a city of sorts. Well, the grass is always real green somewhere...

Nice thread--looking forward to lots of informative updates! I top dress with my organic amendments and water them through, and water a little every day if I can to keep the top moist. Maybe I should invest in a bubbler, but so far so good...

I have a big bag of rice husk charcoal, but don't use it because of all the coco in my medium (too much K if I use both, I feel). I had the same dreams of working with terra preta...ah well, my girls are doing just fine.

Today I mixed the char into the soil, moved the soil into its final (5 gal) containers, and moved those into the growing space to be held at temperature. I will perhaps sow a cover crop (clover?) on top of them soon.

Took down the two MVTFxGrape Krush plants. Need the space and need to stagger the harvest a bit to keep the work from being overwhelming. Even in a tiny garden, it adds up.

The containers are now mulched with canna-leaf but I will be adding more to this as time goes on.

Read something good today along the lines of: we do not hear what ancient forests are saying, because they do not speak to us... in much the same way that we do not bother speaking to our intestinal flora.

Raining a lot lately, the barrels fill up and I become eager to water with them, despite the fact that they are pretty chilly. My ancestors come from some damp, dark, and cool areas... but I feel drawn to the tropics.

chappie said:

Mixed up 45 (or so) gallons of soil.
...
and for the possibly quacky hell of it, some paramagnetic rock.
...

Click to expand...

LOL Paramagnetic rock sounds so organic sci-fi Like agriculture after the radical discovery of how to handle another force of nature and channel it... into the buds.

Good luck with Orient Express!

yoss33, I definitely added it on a quasi-ritualistic whim. Same way some people have a little statue of buddha in their garden, or play music for plants... it was just an extra touch I did to let the plants know I was trying to do something nice for them. Figured at worst it was adding a little more texture and variety to the mineral content.

Hmmm... I probably should set up some music for them now that I think about it.

Woah, this sounds like my kinda grow.. Cutting edge paramagnetic technologies and an awesome Ace variety... Go Chappie!

7 of the seeds are up, and no reason think the rest won't be up soon. They'll spend a week or two under the t5s and then move into the tent with 600 watts of eye hortilux.

I have bulb envy--I'm using a generic HPS and it's about time I upgraded!

EDIT: bought me a brand new EU-made Philips bulb! No more Chinese crud. It's much hotter in the tent now, and way brighter too!

Today 9 of the seedlings are up... Also grabbed some white clover seeds to use as a cover crop/living mulch. They are mostly for outdoor beds but figured it would be fun to try them indoors, too. The containers are now "cooking" under the light so the clover growing will also help conserve the moisture inside and remind me to gently water the containers, keeping the inoculated bacteria happy. At least that is my thinking.

Hey chappie,

We used the clover method last season on our outdoor grow. Seemed to work a treat for us. It'll be interesting to see how it works for you indoors.. Good luck..

I did go ahead and plant the clover, and gave all the containers a good deep watering to assist with the pre-breakdown process. Used rainwater augmented with aloe and Ful-Power (humic and fulvic acid).

I am starting to get really cranky about the sativa in flower that seems to want to take forever. The OE is a little too interesting for me to stall the grow just so this one plant can finish. I did vape a sample of this late-bloomer and it is plenty potent, but it just feels wrong to take down a plant with lanky, white-pistiled flowers. So it goes... I think tomorrow I will harvest the other 2 or 3 Grape Krush x MVTF, and then let the sativa go until the OEs are bursting out of their solo cups.

Today's track:

[YOUTUBEIF]ZL2KNJWKtN0[/YOUTUBEIF]

Maybe you could try dropping the hours of light to 11/13 or 10/14 on the sativa after you harvest the other 2-3 girls; it might help it come along a little quicker.

it's already under 11/13, but you are right, i will take it further tonight.

The GKxMTTF are smelling spicy-dank. There is a range of the terpine profile I do not really like too much; a garlic-onion-anise type of stank. It might be a DJ Short thing, as some Chimera plants have had it, too. It can cure out into something better, but it is almost acrid as the plants are drying/curing. These plants have it... though one is sweet and creamy and hope that increases with the cure.

I was also, yesterday, given a few handfuls of seeds of 3 varieties from a breeder(?) known as "beneath cool". they are mildly interesting, but now I am thinking there is no time for a long time, since I have all these ACE seeds to play with.