Advancing Eco Agriculture, Product Science

[slownickel]

SlowN I'm curious about your opinion on sap testing? it seems you foo foo on the woo sap tests. Do you find no value in it? would appreciate you sharing. Fertilizer sales man or not Kempf and Sait have been able to increase yields and reduce disease and insect pressure through measuring sap, from my understanding. correct me if I'm wrong

@Happy Spectacular question.
Sap meters are telling you what?

One of at least four things, none of which you will be unable to ascertain with any sap test to fully understand why your K meter isn't humming.

Without adequate roots, dump on that K all you want. Where do adequate roots come from? Enough Ca and P. More meters!!!

With Ca, P and all the K in the world, a lop sided Fe/Mn or (Fe+Al)/Mn, no K uptake.

With all the Ca, K and Fe and Mn necessary and inadequate P from the beginning, add all the K you want, no K flow.

If higher Na than K and exceeding 10% or so of the bases, add all the K you want. The plant is twanged to shit.

With no understanding of what is driving what, you have little idea of why that K isn't showing up in your meter. Of course, woowoo salesman have a fancy fix for that don't they! Throw everything at the problem and hope you hit it. That again is a hit or miss if you are not making good measurements of what you have and figure out what you need, no? Or add more foliarly! MORE, MORE, MORE...start chanting please.. MORE, MORE, MORE.... oops $500 pounds! New class? LESS, LESS, LESS... no more Corvettes with leave painted all over them for Big Mike at the Cup! Sink or swim!

Why not just get a fucking road map?

And to make matters worse, without a clear stradegy of when and how to move that CEC to exactly where you want it to go and when, folks are working their brains out and barely touching the genetic potential much less able to slap a turbo on with more K! I think folks that work that way are lost, no road map. Close your eyes and guess or buy every woowoo bottle and make sure you put the right ml's in of each every day... oh, and don't mind that nasty burn in your throat, cough, cough....

And of course you want K high. We all do. No arguement. Just do it with a road map, a plan, and run your plan. High K is productivity, quantity and quality which also can give insect and disease resistance provided the rest of the pieces are in place.

As you may have been following in the Slownickel Lounge, the base of this is getting your Ca correct from the get go and making sure you don't start with a jacked pH due to more woowoo crabshells, lobster shells, dolomite, lime, oyster, eggshells, etc... details.

 

[slownickel]

That is kind of a loaded question. Some around here will say tons. If I had high Ca (say above 70%) with good microlife Id add alot less then if I was below 68%. So case by case basis.

This Ca and K meter are coming in handy. Funny part is Im pretty much doing the same thing as before just more fine tuned.

Crazy weather here in SoCO. Swept the snow off the dep tarps covered the hoops and fired up the lights and heaters. Was 65 a couple days ago and a couple days before that we got dime size hail. Im sure alot of growers on the eastern slope got fucked by monster hail bigger then golf balls. My giant pumpkins got hammered pretty bad.

I would feel even better about not adding a lot of Ca if I had taken the time to spike gypsum with organic material. Given that calcium is translocatable in the roots the plant can make the decision if it wants more Ca or not.

 

[jidoka]

That is kind of a loaded question. Some around here will say tons. If I had high Ca (say above 70%) with good microlife Id add alot less then if I was below 68%. So case by case basis.

This Ca and K meter are coming in handy. Funny part is Im pretty much doing the same thing as before just more fine tuned.

Crazy weather here in SoCO. Swept the snow off the dep tarps covered the hoops and fired up the lights and heaters. Was 65 a couple days ago and a couple days before that we got dime size hail. Im sure alot of growers on the eastern slope got fucked by monster hail bigger then golf balls. My giant pumpkins got hammered pretty bad.

What kinda soil are you growing pumpkins in? I hear super high organic with cec around 90 is the key.

 

[reppin2c]

I'm waiting on my analysis but the big pumpkin will be in the same soil that my full term plants will be in. It should be pretty close. May have to water in sulfates with some humic & fulvic. Maybe I'll add some more organic matter but I think it should be in the 35% range. It's a lighter 1/3 peat mix. Right now it's in my clone trans container mix

SN- I have a Ca meter also. I spray Albion Ca with every foliar. I've been able to keep stacking Ca&K in the plant sap. The PH has dropped a bit to 6.2 and the next reading I'll have a better idea. But the brix is what really has made a change. Went from 10 solid line originally to starts fading at 5 and stops fading at 20. At first I was skeptical about the meters but the trust has been building since the meters are comfirming what im seeing. I'm more into spiking higher P nutes. Bone meal etc but I haven't spiked in years. Tom hill once said a monochromatic mix is what you want and if he says it you just take it as gold

 

[jidoka]

I use soluble Ca in place of spikes. About a 2 wk lead time to show up in sap that way.

I actually like soluble humic which is 14% K to raise K and Cec at the same time.

Properly used zeolite and vermiculite also jack up cec. You just gotta keep those sites full

 

[slownickel]

I use soluble Ca in place of spikes. About a 2 wk lead time to show up in sap that way.

I actually like soluble humic which is 14% K to raise K and Cec at the same time.

Properly used zeolite and vermiculite also jack up cec. You just gotta keep those sites full

You talking about that calcium silicate? Does that spike your pH?

Seen folks lose millions using stuff like zeolite and azomite, initial response is often excellent, but the Al catches up with you.

When folks have a decent base distribution and want to increase their conductivity, quite often the higher side of conductivity comes from nitrogen.

More potassium to get to higher EC is in addition to what the K meter tells you?

 

[slownickel]

Might suggest that if you aren't getting your Ca up where you want it, maybe you aren't starting with enough?

When one has to bow to foliar sprays, something isn't correct in the soil.

I'm waiting on my analysis but the big pumpkin will be in the same soil that my full term plants will be in. It should be pretty close. May have to water in sulfates with some humic & fulvic. Maybe I'll add some more organic matter but I think it should be in the 35% range. It's a lighter 1/3 peat mix. Right now it's in my clone trans container mix

SN- I have a Ca meter also. I spray Albion Ca with every foliar. I've been able to keep stacking Ca&K in the plant sap. The PH has dropped a bit to 6.2 and the next reading I'll have a better idea. But the brix is what really has made a change. Went from 10 solid line originally to starts fading at 5 and stops fading at 20. At first I was skeptical about the meters but the trust has been building since the meters are comfirming what im seeing. I'm more into spiking higher P nutes. Bone meal etc but I haven't spiked in years. Tom hill once said a monochromatic mix is what you want and if he says it you just take it as gold

 

[Lightweight]

So my soil report should be on here in an attachment.

Anyway the CEC went from 3.41 to 9.5. Apparently the soil just needed someone to love it. I'm pretty stoked on the improvement so far and it should just keep getting better.

I've got the math worked out for for the amendments, but I have a couple choices on some stuff. I'm planning on mixing everything with horse manure to spread it around.

My choices for phosphorous amendments are either fish bone meal or CalPhos. And my choices for a calcium/liming amendment are prilled lime or oyster shell flour. Since these are just going to be top dressed with some manure, is CalPhos a poor choice? Or will I get a better response with fish bone meal? The other things I'm considering is that CalPhos and oyster shell flour have the lower amounts of Mg of those choices.

Also, since the pH came up to 5.9 I don't want to overshoot the amount of lime/oyster shell flour that I apply. Is there a certain ratio that I should apply to get the pH up, but not go too high, e.g., 75% of the Ca amendments be lime and 25% be gypsum?

I was also considering to apply enough lime/oyster shell flour to fill Ca to 68% of the BCSR's and then apply gypsum to fill in another 7-12% of the exchange sites for some quick and more long term calcium action.

And lastly, the media weight% is 88.85. I assume that should be taken into account somewhat?

Thanks for any input you guys have.

Edit: It looks like I'll have to add the soil report later. I don't know why, but icmag loads super slow on my internet connection. It's weird that it's the only website that does that. Gets my conspiracy theory paranoia up, ha ha.

 

[jidoka]

You talking about that calcium silicate? Does that spike your pH?

Seen folks lose millions using stuff like zeolite and azomite, initial response is often excellent, but the Al catches up with you.

When folks have a decent base distribution and want to increase their conductivity, quite often the higher side of conductivity comes from nitrogen.

More potassium to get to higher EC is in addition to what the K meter tells you?[/QUOTE

Not at all what I am talking about...reppin knows, you don't need to

 

[HazyBulldog]

Edit: It looks like I'll have to add the soil report later. I don't know why, but icmag loads super slow on my internet connection. It's weird that it's the only website that does that. Gets my conspiracy theory paranoia up, ha ha.

Ignore that. The NSA, FBI, DEA, ATF are bogging down the connection.

 

[reppin2c]

Might suggest that if you aren't getting your Ca up where you want it, maybe you aren't starting with enough?

When one has to bow to foliar sprays, something isn't correct in the soil.

I'm not starting with enough life to process the Ca, I guarantee that. It was 28 degrees this morning so I'm not getting any EC/cec cranking out of the soil. I've been burning 3 tanks of propane a night just to keep the freeze off. So I doubt the fungi are doing a lot of processing.

Edit maybe I have enough but I want more

As far as the big pumpkin soil I could use a lot of zeolite and leave the soil when I move to the new place. Wouldn't bother me a bit.

My mark Clementz seeds didn't germ. He uses advanced nutes and maybe his own now. The other seeds I got germed good and other then the hail damage are alright. Got a lil special treatment and came in under lights

Of course the Fed is watching but I haven't seen people posting pics of stupid huge grows. That's the ones they want and they want to shut down all the guys running large numbers in CO.

 

[slownickel]

You talking about that calcium silicate? Does that spike your pH?

Seen folks lose millions using stuff like zeolite and azomite, initial response is often excellent, but the Al catches up with you.

When folks have a decent base distribution and want to increase their conductivity, quite often the higher side of conductivity comes from nitrogen.

More potassium to get to higher EC is in addition to what the K meter tells you?[/QUOTE

Not at all what I am talking about...reppin knows, you don't need to

Not sure what you are talking about? Late post?

 

[hobbyhorse]

Reppin u got analysis on that big pumpkin soil yet?

 

[geneva_sativa]

just cant take
anymore

 

[reppin2c]

Still waiting and its my OD full term mix as well. Anytime, I can't wait either.

Should go get some and get it dry I suppose. Have a feeling the vansil won't show on the test.

Never used biochar before so I don't know what that's gonna do but it isnt a large % of the mix. Premixed it with 4 pallets of stutzman supRgreen and it was crazy hot n steamy.

Had a lot of odds and ends left overs from years past that I just threw in. The shop was getting cluttered. Should be called shot in the dark mix.

I'll probably just get plugged when it gets delivered next week and pick up the pieces as the season goes. The whole excavation crew is in T-ride but I should have 3 dump trucks on a 10 mile round trip and I doubt my skid could keep up.

Got the rez in and tomorrow I'll see if the pump can overcome the elevation

 

[jidoka]

Moved from t5 to under plastic and tracking the sun immediately. I only feel the need to spray a little Zn and Co to get the leaf size going up faster

 

[reppin2c]

I like the fresh, young and not bound starts. I think i jumped the gun by a month.

 

[jidoka]

And then you face that decision...do I up pot to 20s and bust my old ass or put em in cold soil and deal with P. If I got it right they should be 2.5 ft by that first week of June and hit the real soil running

Or not. But the dice have been tossed and we will see what we see

 

[reppin2c]

I'm at the point of 2-3' tall in 5 spot pouches. It's been cold and my recent sap trans took a week to dig in and have purpling. 3 tanks of propane a night just aren't enough.

On a side note the first round in the ghouse are also showing P def. Gotta run up the road and grab some SRP slurry. What do you think about phosphoric acid in foliar? I was think about going pretty light but that would be like right now P

 

[jidoka]

P acid is the only one that shows a sap response foliar. But do add some humic and sugar (molasses)to buffer it and go light and often. Also add some epsom, just trust me on that or pm me.