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Advancing Eco Agriculture, Product Science

VortexPower420

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Veteran
Slownickle- interesting stuff. I have always been a fan of the more Ca the better. Every 2 months they get 2 grams borax AMD either gypsum or Cal phos. Everything seems to like it. Other then that it is only topdressing of nuitrent dense plants (horsetail, comfrey, nettles, dandilion and a little seaweeed and even less alfalfa.)

Reams is a interesting fellow. I have been diving into his stuff more recently. I have Dr Skows book right now "mainline farmi g for the 21st century" and have always enjoyed Charles Walters views if incorporating alot of different ideas at once.

I'll be honest here. Never have, and probably never will on my high om "soilless mix" as I don't trust the testing methods on lightweight mixes. I trust the microbes and om to do its job or regulating. It's working well for now.

It seem most of the agronomist I have read or listened to (Walters, Sait, albrecth, Skow, Kempf, kitterage, and others) say that the more om and life you have the less you need to have minerals balanced perfectly. In a range of course but not exact.

What are your thought on soil testing lightweight soils and the accuracy of the testing methods?

Then all labs are different so how does that factor in? How does this affect the differences in the recommendations and the actual balance in the soil?

I know some here in the past have questioned some labs testing methods with light soils and debated weither they were accurate.

Your thoughts?


Milky-did you get that protoza recipe from Gramme Sait? He reccomends something very similar, but his is just lucurne in a bucket of water for 24 hours.
 

Avenger

Well-known member
Veteran
Magnesium sulfate is a chemically made magnesium form where they add sulfuric acid to it. Only in this form to my understanding (I may be wrong on this one) it is the only form that will inflate several times and cause this problem.

All Minerals are chemically made, see the definition of mineral from my previous post.

When you say "magnesium form", what are you talking about? Can you list the different forms magnesium takes?

what do you mean "inflate"? what inflates? what does the inflating?
 

slownickel

Active member
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Veteran
Magnesium article

Magnesium article

You can easily get magnesium levels by using the wrong sources to the point where you begin to cut yields, even kill crops. Maui sugar cane article enclosed to demonstrate the point. oops sorry, to big for this forum.... 4.5 megs

Here is a decent article for you to better understand about magnesium and the problems it can cause in the soil.

The is magnesium chloride, magnesium sulfate, magnesium oxide, magnesium nitrate, magnesium citrate, magnesium carbonate... surely there are other forms.

The forms in which it is found in nature, I am not to sure about. Look it up on google. Not something I worry about. Nor do I play much with semantics. I am one of those dumb farmer types.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/images/smilies/tiphat.gif
 

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  • why magnesium is not to be applied to the soil.pdf
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slownickel

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Vortex,

You are on the right path. If you run Reams recommendations in pounds to a base distribution, you get 85% Ca.....

I try to apply gypsum once every three months, it is nearly impossible to build inventories with gypsum. I mix in ground seashells into my compost pile, which eventually becomes worm castings. With worm castings, that calcium becomes very available and stays that way. Same thing with our fish and chicken bone meal we get.

Skow is almost 100% Reams, even though he came around to gypsum at their lab and that lab now a days has pushed their gypsum rec's up greatly as they have seen the response. We are all on the same forum at the Reams high brix page and the discussions you can look up there.

Some of the best farms I work with apply gypsum three or four times a year. The best grower who is 100% dialed in at 85% to 87% Ca constantly was just voted the #2 grape label by the Chinese importers association. That farm was the only one in Peru to make it into the top 10 by the way.... His motto is if he can't see it under the drip lines, someone is in trouble. He doesn't stop.

Folks don't realize that more calcium you add, adds space for you to fertilize. Once potassium and sodium together get to 10 % or so, fried roots. Once magnesium gets to 30% plus, fried roots. What is the only element that can fix this? Calcium. Especially if you can include calcium carbonate. Note the word carbon ate, there is carbon in that molecule and as such it adds to the CEC making more sites available to bind more cations. Building a soil so to speak.

I just ran some samples on an Oregon grower who has all that fancy medium materials you all love. It is a sponge. Picks up a huge amount of water and nutrients. I only ran Melich 3. His is loving the response to using gypsum and calcium carbonate together so far. We are only a month or so into though. Just dialing in now the metal problems. Testing quantities to make sure no negative results for dosages in that medium. I really am in diapers on mediums.

All that organic material is going to make manganese problems up the wazzooo for ever and ever. We are going to try and make manganese spikes using clay. Stay tuned.

Seems that if one wants to push the high conductivity, you all are going to have to keep this medium pretty wet or have a huge amount of calcium so that the roots can tolerate it.

The only way to prove this to ones self is to do trials. I know it sounds stupid, but it is the only way to learn. Otherwise you are faced with a zillion different wannabees all toting a book or wonder juice to sell. I don't sell anything.

I think we are here on this planet to serve. Not be served. I also like to learn and have a hard time swallowing garbage. Much less smoking it.

We use a lot of organic material here in Peru. We are talking about soils where we get less than an inch of rain a year. Our soils look like sands but are full of loam and in some cases clay. We also have calcium carbonate, sodium and iron bicarbonates and other type deposits that make for new soils. Arizona and New Mexico in places all have these type formations too. Parts of California and Nevada as well.
 

reppin2c

Well-known member
Veteran
Sea shield- hell.ya I wate and foliar till week 4. Almost impossible to.over due and build hella frost...on a balanced soil(depending the judge). Ive taken it to week 7 but s praying water on fat buD's and getting mold isn't something you actually try for. No matter how your Littles fill
 

slownickel

Active member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Frost

Frost

Seashield looks to be crab and shrimp waste with phosphoric acid.

Spiking phosphorus raises the energy in the plant immediately. This is why so many folks are pushing heavy P going into flowering. If they had started even sooner, folks wouldn't imagine what they will see. ATP folks. ATP is the most basic energy molecule in the plant. Look up what it is made of.
 

orechron

Member
Slownickel,

Have you grown cannabis is soil or media with Ca above 85%? Or soil and or media with K below 2%? Either of these situations have presented problems for me. If the soil is oversaturated (7.0pH or higher) the sap is alkaline and I get bugs showing up. If K is below 2% saturation there is always a deficiency even in good cec clay. We get 40-60 inches of rain a year here and the soil is different. Most people's yards I test if I'm helping them with their small veggie gardens have samples come back with soil pH at 5.3-5.5. Adding gypsum isn't a good option here.

Also confused about how the carbon from lime increases cec? The end product is carbon dioxide, but what happens to it?
 

slownickel

Active member
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Veteran
Calcium questions

Calcium questions

Folks often get confused regarding pH and calcium.

I run all my crops at 85% calcium (including my grow). No problems.

I tried testing my pH's of the sap as suggested by Kempf and the company in the UK. My pH here in these soils runs about 6.8 to 7.2 depending on the quantity of sodium in the soil. The more sodium, the more the pH spikes. Same with nitrates. In the same soil and the same conditions, each root stock of my avocado showed different pH's. This does not seem to be a real science. I have very little insect and almost no fungal problems. All my farms are certified organic for Europe and the US. I export directly. Been farming and exporting for more than 30 years.

This may explain your problems as everyone pounds nitrates in their grow, resulting in rising pH's and some major blocking of elements like Mn and Cu.

I have applied gypsum in acid soils in citrus where calcium carbonate at 10 MT/HA (1 ha=2.4 acres) (1 MT=2200 lbs) took three years to get response on a 4.5 pH clay soil. We tripled yields with gypsum in 1 year. Gypsum does not lower or increase pH, it is neutral.

Calcium carbonate will increase pH.

Obviously at this level of calcium at 85%, one must be super careful to manage potassium correctly. Keep Mg low. If you see a Mg problem, it is most likely a P problem, not a Mg problem. If you really believe there is a Mg problem, apply Mg foliarly. 1 or 2% foliarly with Mg sulfate works fine and Mg is very mobile in the plant and will allow Mg to make it to the roots.

I have also done this with blueberries, which everyone thinks need acid soils.

Realize with gypsum, this is a constant process, not a one time application. Three or four applications over the season, in quantities that are well calculated. Also understand that when you push other elements out, you need to maintain your K where it needs to be (I personally push for 5 to 6% K).

Some of the best grapes here are in sandy soils are at 7% Mg!

Don't take my word for it, nor that of anyone else. Please only do trials until you are satisfied and convinced. THIS IS THE GOLDEN RULE.

My experience so far in medium with cannabis is limited only in Oregon and so far, looks pretty good. The cupped leaves are starting to flatten out and the grow is getting pretty good. What the grower is after is quality, not quantity. But these are not mutually exclusive objectives, it is quite possible to achieve both!

As me again in a couple of months when the grow is finished and we have the THC reports in.

We are pulling foliar analysis this week. Stay tuned. I will post numbers and photos.

Print out this article and then write in the THC values in table 6 to the right of Table 3. Then look at soil 2 vs any other. Then look at the soil and take a look at these base distributions..... LMAO. K%=1.8%, Mg%=3.9% and Ca%=93.5%, Na%= 0.8%

Also look at the level of Mg in this soil, which actually would worry anyone... Yet, the results? Nearly double the THC!!!!!

Science is amazing when used properly. Amazing article. Looks to be funded by our tax dollars so that they could find crops and then try and tell you where it was grown based on the leaf analysis.
 

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  • Cannabinoid Profile and Elemental Uptake of Cannabis...Soil - 1975.pdf
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Dab Strudel

Active member
Hey guys I was just thinking about old posts and such and I remember a product came off AEA's line up, maybe it was Tianio but I am pretty sure it was AEA. How does it effect your crop this year without it and what was it?
 

orechron

Member
Folks often get confused regarding pH and calcium.

I run all my crops at 85% calcium (including my grow). No problems.

This isn't meant to offend, but I don't think there is a grow on this planet with no problems. No nutrient is an island (from the mouth of Graime Sait), in other words overload one thing and availability of other things decreases. I've read/heard it from different sources and found it to be true in practice.

I tried testing my pH's of the sap as suggested by Kempf and the company in the UK. My pH here in these soils runs about 6.8 to 7.2 depending on the quantity of sodium in the soil. The more sodium, the more the pH spikes. Same with nitrates. In the same soil and the same conditions, each root stock of my avocado showed different pH's. This does not seem to be a real science. I have very little insect and almost no fungal problems. All my farms are certified organic for Europe and the US. I export directly. Been farming and exporting for more than 30 years.

This setting is much different than a cannabis grow. Often we're working with homogenous soils or medias and not stratified soils that change dramatically every foot. The media I've been working with for the past two years now fluctuates between 6.2-6.6pH and the sap of my plants between 6.0-6.5pH. Its only now that I've not had to deal with pests like I have in the past with variable or unknown soils or medias. Monitoring sap pH is the single most important piece of information next to brix and visual observation. I don't think Nova Crop Control would be in business if they weren't practicing good science.

This may explain your problems as everyone pounds nitrates in their grow, resulting in rising pH's and some major blocking of elements like Mn and Cu.

I haven't had to dump bottles like so many do to hit acceptable numbers with my current soil. Interestingly enough, the high pH scenario that gave me problems was with Coot's mix. If you're not familiar with it, its a over-rich, compost based mix that grows what would appear as healthy plants to most people, but K saturation is at least 10%, sometimes 15% without adequate Calcium (55-60%). I knew low Calcium was going to be an issue so I increased the amount a bit and ended up with 67% Ca, 17%Mg, 10%K, 2% Na, 50ppm NO3-, 7.4pH. Plant sap in this mix was 7.2pH; it attracted mites into the room, while the plants in my main grid did not get infested. 50ppm nitrate is still on the low end of what you may find in common medias.

I have applied gypsum in acid soils in citrus where calcium carbonate at 10 MT/HA (1 ha=2.4 acres) (1 MT=2200 lbs) took three years to get response on a 4.5 pH clay soil. We tripled yields with gypsum in 1 year. Gypsum does not lower or increase pH, it is neutral.

Calcium carbonate will increase pH.

Obviously at this level of calcium at 85%, one must be super careful to manage potassium correctly. Keep Mg low. If you see a Mg problem, it is most likely a P problem, not a Mg problem. If you really believe there is a Mg problem, apply Mg foliarly. 1 or 2% foliarly with Mg sulfate works fine and Mg is very mobile in the plant and will allow Mg to make it to the roots.

Many people in this industry run really high P. So high, that is increases demand for Mg. This is one thing that you'll see right away when you walk into many rooms. I really want to get to the point where foliars aren't required, so I'm constantly adjusting mixes now with lower P.

I have also done this with blueberries, which everyone thinks need acid soils.

I'm on board with that. There isn't really anything I'm interested in growing where I'd use acid soil. Acidic=lacks fertility. Plus, I need to have enough calcium available so the berries can withstand oriental fruit fly pressure.

Realize with gypsum, this is a constant process, not a one time application. Three or four applications over the season, in quantities that are well calculated. Also understand that when you push other elements out, you need to maintain your K where it needs to be (I personally push for 5 to 6% K).

I've seen what one, massive application of gypsum can do a few years ago. Not pretty. It's not really a starting option in the pacific northwest. We always start with lime.

Some of the best grapes here are in sandy soils are at 7% Mg!

Don't take my word for it, nor that of anyone else. Please only do trials until you are satisfied and convinced. THIS IS THE GOLDEN RULE.

My experience so far in medium with cannabis is limited only in Oregon and so far, looks pretty good. The cupped leaves are starting to flatten out and the grow is getting pretty good. What the grower is after is quality, not quantity. But these are not mutually exclusive objectives, it is quite possible to achieve both!

Agreed. Quality drives quantity

As me again in a couple of months when the grow is finished and we have the THC reports in.

We are pulling foliar analysis this week. Stay tuned. I will post numbers and photos.

Print out this article and then write in the THC values in table 6 to the right of Table 3. Then look at soil 2 vs any other. Then look at the soil and take a look at these base distributions..... LMAO. K%=1.8%, Mg%=3.9% and Ca%=93.5%, Na%= 0.8%

Also look at the level of Mg in this soil, which actually would worry anyone... Yet, the results? Nearly double the THC!!!!!

Science is amazing when used properly. Amazing article. Looks to be funded by our tax dollars so that they could find crops and then try and tell you where it was grown based on the leaf analysis.

I will probably put together a mix with the saturation numbers you're promoting, but I think I know whats going to happen. I might be wrong. The other thing that I've found to be opposite in my experience is the claim that NO3- s alkaline? Especially in plant sap. Take calcium nitrate for example, plant uptakes both and the calcium becomes an immobile component in the tissue and the nitrate remains in the sap, pH drops. Cations alkalize, anions acidify...

Edit: In soil if the plants uptake the N, then yes, CaNO3-, KNO3-, etc. would alkalize. The sap situation is different if the plants aren't able to use the nitrate right away.
 
Last edited:

orechron

Member
Excellent post and I bow to your experience.

Glad you choose to experiment.

Hope my comments help.

They definitely do get the wheels turning. I hope you stick around and share the results of your experiment. This forum isn't always a very professional place and the industry is definitely going to be demanding knowledge used in other areas of agriculture.

I have a question on a topic you may be experienced in. Do you have an approach to remediating soil that has been heavily treated with roundup/glyphosate? I've been playing with some local topsoil and the plants are throwing weird leaves like they have a Zinc deficiency but foliar and soil treatments with Zinc don't seem to be able to fix the situation. I treated the soil with fulvic acid and a microbial inoculant. According to Graeme Sait this can stimulate microbial decomposition of the herbicide. I've yet to confirm if or how effective that is.
 

slownickel

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Veteran
Roundup is a bitch to get neutralized. The metabolites last for many many years according to Dr. Huber who has studied the hell out of this.

Dr. Soto from Costa Rica from the Earth University and an ex neighbor of my banana farm there, insists that Roundup has changed the genetics of the crops where it has been applied.

Realize that not only does Roundup grab and sequester (I don't like the word chelate in this case as chelate for me means to make more available) micros like zinc, manganese, copper, cobalt, nickel as well as calcium, it is an antibiotic!

So first order is to spray enough biology constantly to get things moving again. Also realize that Roundup has some "inerts" they call them, that are even more toxic than the glyphosate molecule. Are you referring to real Roundup or a generic?

Zinc or any other metal foliarly doesn't work real well. Metals are not translocatable to the roots and only help with a fraction of the problem and historically no one has seen yield influences using metals foliarly. With that said, quality it does seem to help....

Sorry, but there are no magic answers for glyphosate. It really is a bitch to deal with. There are friends with citrusn, banana, pineapple and asparagus that suffer greatly from this crap for years.

You may want to try and make feeding stations below the surface of the soil. This means using a piece of rebar or something similar and opening up a funnel in the soil by moving it around side to side etc... Then filling that hole with what you think is missing in a conducive medium.

For manganese, I recommend NOT using organic material as manganese uptake crashes when it it bound by organic material. I would try using a clay. Spike in a couple of spots your zinc and or manganese and see what happens.

All the GMO seeds are bred for aluminum toxicity. In Honduras, where they multiply GMO seed for Monsanto and others, I had some pretty interesting as well as heated discussions regarding their GMO seeds. They know what this crap does and are breeding around it. Which could also explain the huge amount of aluminum that is showing up everywhere in places where it has never been seen before from the jet trails. Not sure if I really believe this is the cause or not, but that is the hype floating around.

Metals compete with each other for uptake. Zinc and manganese as well as copper are antagonistic to iron and aluminum for example and are are critical to lower aluminum and iron uptake. You can probably add cobalt, nickel and copper to that list. Metals can replace each other in the plant, but cannot replace the missing metals function, resulting in a much less "complete" plant.

Sorry I can't be of more help.
 

Avenger

Well-known member
Veteran
are you sure its not glyphosate induced magnaese def?

It is fairly well known that mixing manganese fertilizer with your glyphosate spray, makes the herbicide damn near useless. But I doubt you have any free glyphosate in top soil that was sprayed any length of time ago. Any micronutrient def caused by glyphosate is likely the result of its strong chelation, which not only makes the metal element less bio-available, it also redduces the bio-availability of the glyphosate to microbial catabolism and or plant uptake.

https://www.btny.purdue.edu/WeedScience/2010/GlyphosateMn.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/public...and_Aminomethylphosphonate_by_Manganese_Oxide

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20676632

https://www.academia.edu/4309888/Phyto-Microbial_Degradation_of_Glyphosate_in_Riyadh_Area
 

Avinash.miles

Caregiver Extraordinaire
Moderator
ICMag Donor
Veteran
to remediate glyphosate look into r. pulastris bacteria (in products like quantum vsc, hsc, and lite)
i'm told that the bacteria allows glyphosate to do what it does ( herbicide) THEN the r pulastris bacteria population spikes as it eats the remaining glyphosate up.
 

slownickel

Active member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Avi,

Where did you here that this beast remediates glyphosate? I bought a bottle to try on some asparagus. I will also take a sample to a buddy at the Univ. to see if he can clone it for me.
 

EastBayGrower

Member
Veteran
so a quick update, i ordered a gallon of each of the nutrient line about a month ago, it took about a week or so to get the order shipped but to my surprise i was missing the Rejuvinate and Sea Stim :(

Took pictures of the boxes received and notified my contact with AEA, took them about a week and couple trys on my part but they finally responded and said they would re-sent the two... that was about two weeks ago, still no Rejuvinate or Sea stim....

and now i want to order some additional Sea shield and photomag but an hesitant...

as far as the line goes itself, I FREAKING LOVE IT SO FAR!, immeadiate increase in plant growth and sturdier, lighter green plants, not that super dark green nitrified look...

ive been using 1-2ml per gallon of each nutrient with PHT PHOS, PHT CAL, photomag, sea shield (this stuff is awesome) and micropak, along with Spectrum nd seacrop..


wish the company was more on-point but they got the goods and i for one will put up with it.... for now....



 

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