Land of a thousand colas, part deux

[greyfader]

ive done alot of research on calcium products and mobility and or lack of. I use a bunch of calcium products already. while i slightly understand, i see the difference. And what i found is all of slows products are relabeled and already availble in the agricultural field already. But he has brought the science aspect into the canna light.

My other true belief is microbes an enzymes can get you into the top percent of what the environment, nutrition, and genetics are capable of.

so, I'm still running ppk systems and this last year started trying to move the flavor profile up a few notches.

I'm using perlite as the main body of the medium for the structure to get the proper air-filled porosity and water retention but I'm now adding worm castings to the medium in a large percentage ratio. in 6 gals of perlite, I add approximately 3 lbs of worm castings right out of the moist bag. this inoculates the system with a large variety of microbes and other beneficials.

i'm adding diatomaceous earth directly to the medium as well. it is amorphous silicon dioxide and is plant-available.

I don't change out or dump the reservoir during the entire course of a grow so it all stays in the system.

for the liquid feed, I'm still using the Jacks 5-12-26 with calcinit and additional mag sulfate but I'm adding 1ml per gal of fulvic acid and some kelp powder.

this combination noticeably improved flavor.

Using HPS lights i never added extra mag sulfate because the base formula contains over 6% but with LEDs I do need more.

i use a reduced strength (80%) of the 3-2-1 which is per gallon 3gr jacks, 2gr calcinit, and 1gr mag sulfate.

i'm not sure which components are improving flavor but something in this mix is definitely helping.

 

[gmanwho]

Its tough to grow outdoor here without a proper environment, aka greenhouse. then throw in the lack of actual full sunny days, and or the sun intensity you see out west. Out west or colorado can have 320+ days of actual sun. Crazy when you goto something like weather spark and compare zipcode to another zipcode. all the data

hell ya the the calcium "shelfs " under the branching in that last pic. Was that in VT or? or dm me

ya sulfur is important for oil and terpene production. and all the micros u mentioned, and i'll add in Boron, molybdenum, Cobalt and silica. Been using this micro trace from Plant Products for a few years now. Gotta crunch some numbers to get some proper levels of cobalt back in the mix. Fulvic, amino's & proteins, glycine, enzymes, chitosan, monosilic acid, sar products, and all the chelated micros i can throw at them. was turned onto jhbiotec an albion products some years ago.

I will say i need to learn more about the function and absorption of caco3. Well that and a list of other things.

The rabbit hole runs deep my friend .....

 

[gmanwho]

so, I'm still running ppk systems and this last year started trying to move the flavor profile up a few notches.

I'm using perlite as the main body of the medium for the structure to get the proper air-filled porosity and water retention but I'm now adding worm castings to the medium in a large percentage ratio. in 6 gals of perlite, I add approximately 3 lbs of worm castings right out of the moist bag. this inoculates the system with a large variety of microbes and other beneficials.

i'm adding diatomaceous earth directly to the medium as well. it is amorphous silicon dioxide and is plant-available.

I don't change out or dump the reservoir during the entire course of a grow so it all stays in the system.

for the liquid feed, I'm still using the Jacks 5-12-26 with calcinit and additional mag sulfate but I'm adding 1ml per gal of fulvic acid and some kelp powder.

this combination noticeably improved flavor.

Using HPS lights i never added extra mag sulfate because the base formula contains over 6% but with LEDs I do need more.

i use a reduced strength (80%) of the 3-2-1 which is per gallon 3gr jacks, 2gr calcinit, and 1gr mag sulfate.

i'm not sure which components are improving flavor but something in this mix is definitely helping.

hey grey. i agree with the ewc castings are beneficial. inoculate the medium, then a place for them to live thrive and reproduce.

but the question really is, for how long do they live? And is the synthetic food hindering their ability to survive? And.........Wheres their food source? When will the colony collapse when they run out of food? will we know when it does?

Wheres the point when they start to die off? wheres their constant food source if we never add back some sort of compostable materials and or some other food source? Dead root enough? at the least add back molasses or some other carb source, humic fulvics, aminos fatty acids and protein hydrolysates.

Its alot to learn. im no scholar and the work load only allows a few hours a day to read and research. And then what i can't comprehend takes further patience an understanding.



I forget where another branch of learning led me to read and or beleive that enzymes are more favorable in a hydro environment then most microbes. But that was another rabbit hole. Pond zymes and other soil digesters. So i have been adding atp pond zymes and a similar hygrozyme that has chitosan in it. Im sure there are better enzyme's out there,but i need to do more research and see whats available.


So thats what led me to believe that if i cant understand all of this, lets replenish the microbe army on a weekly or daily basis. And then i can change or tailor the army to their stage of growth. And then add organic ammendments while im at it.

Then my answer, for now, became a tea brewer.

Before i shut down the last spot, the best health and product i think i ever had was one of my smaller rooms that had reservoir with a tea brewer in it. de hps & cmh combo, top drip dtw, 2-3 gal coco with organic ammendements & gypsum, 1 gal perlite under the coco bucket, The highest terpenes i think i ever reached from the same Cherry stardawg that i had atleast 12 or so runs with.


this last run i started adding in rice hull to my coco at about a 10% ratio. silica for one reason, then maybe possibly another food soure and or area for the microbes to setup.

I have also contemplated a small amount of rolled oats in a mix for a microbe food source,at least in the top few inches of the medium. but thats another area i need to research more.

I spent few hours yesterday building a new air lift to turn one of my reservoirs into a tea brewer.

 

[greyfader]

good questions! the ewc castings do contain humic and fulvic substances and i'm adding fulvic throughout the grow with every load of nutrients. at first, i was concerned that i would have some type of bacterial bloom and subsequent die-off that would contaminate the solution but this has not occurred.

the last grow which was a pheno hunt had 12 plants with 12lbs of castings over 48 gals of solution.

maybe the humics and fulvics are providing some food for the beneficials. and the plants' root exudates contain enabling substances to help the bacteria survive. also, there is the kelp powder added continuously.

but i am thinking about feeding the bacteria some carbs. i'm going about this slowly and carefully, observing the solution for clarity and color. so far, it has been very stable with no radical ph swings which could be an indicator of the solution going bad.

i never dump the solution during a grow now. all the way from veg to harvest. the last grow was 15 weeks without a changeout.

i just bought a brix refractometer to help me monitor the plants reactions.

i used rice hulls to cut unscreened turface for a year at about 50/50 by volume. i don't think the silicon is all that plant available compared to the DE.

so much to learn and so little time.

also, since going to perlite with castings and DE i haven't seen any bugs at all. not even a single fungus gnat.

 

[JKD]

A little biochar? Serve as both a carbon source for the microbes, and as a habitat.

 

[gmanwho]

grey, imo i think in most cases until all is understood we want to makes sure we are feeding the microbes we want to reproduce, and not the unknowns that COULD be in the medium already, or a slow increasing presence once the ewc influence possibly runs out.

putting ewc in the medium one thing, but expecting it to be influential 50-75-100 days later is a gamble to me. so i choose to replenish it.

One of the couple reasons i stopped recirculating previously used nutrient. Adding another open food source to the system can possibly feed something else you dont want to reproduce. but i do guess most rots an such do feed on our host plant and not other microbes.

but, which brings me to the 2nd part of the brewer, adding in beneficials that seek out things like fusarium phythium sclerotinia and other fungal molds bacteria or blights etc. sure im jumbling some things up there.

some of these nasty fuckers we dont want possibly can move up and down the plant and into the roots. this is yet another point why we dont want fungus gnats.


so i kinda stick to the external air lift tea brewer with known inputs. add the microbes i want, add a food source, let them reproduce. and ya some might start feeding on each other in the tea brewer, but i guess only then the strong survives. then unleash this new tea into the medium.

Knowing that these microbes go in fresh is "Almost" a fail safe, as long as you know your input. its like im replenishing wave after waves of ninjas to go in on a daily basis. eventually the enemy will succumb.

 

[gmanwho]

A little biochar? Serve as both a carbon source for the microbes, and as a habitat.

Yes, i completely forgot about biochar. I know at one point is used tupur coco. from royal something brand ??I forget the company

Do you use biochar regularly ? If so, soil or hydro an whats your method if u care to share?

 

[gmanwho]

The Clip is from the 50-60mph left over hurricane winds that rolled thru. The brunt of the storm passed east of me towards nova scotia. As the system swirled the heaviest winds basically came in from westerly directions in this video.

the Original Peach Hash plant took the brunt of the storm as they where the first to break the winds. But in all i only lost surprisingly a handful of small branches, an one bigger branch. maybe at best, a 1/2 ounce to ounce if allowed to continue on.

Lost alot more to rot. especially the peach hash plant, even before the winds. next year i have a few different beneficial microbes i will be using to combat the botrytis.

as i drove down the hill, all i could see was the wind battering the canopy, swaying like a sail in multi directional winds. the trellis was Sloppy then stretched like a guitar string.

I quickly drove back and picked up a box full of old rope ratchets. Drove back and crossed braced the cannopy at multiple points. I knew my trellis was tight before. And as i got in there ancoring the trellis i realized parts of the plastic trellis had broke arround the fence posts, causing slop.

I felt at my best during that chaos. Most people would shelter. I wanted nothing more to ride the storm out. Part of me wanted a crazier situation. like when i was on my buddies sail boat and got caught in 35/40 ft swells off the coast one time. From the trough to the crest of the each swell / wave was like riding up and down a 3 story building over and over. all while sitting 3ft off the water line.

for the 20-30 minutes i spent anchoring, all i had repeating in my head was the storm was Maynard from Tool singing "fuckkkkk you buddyy, fuckkkk you buddy". Lyrics from hooker with a penis. Which reminds me, im about 40 days away from back to back tool shows at mohegan sun in connecticut.


Really not sure how to post a video in this thread. So all i could figure out was this.
https://www.icmag.com/media/img_1899-mov.18714099/

 

[greyfader]

royal gold tupur. we used it in the ppk in oregon for a while. fairly expensive. it is usable right out of the bag though.

i stopped using it when i found that i could buy pumice for 40 bucks a yard. it worked well but was filthy and needed a lot of washing.

be careful using biochar as it can suck the nitrogen out of solution.

 

[greyfader]

as we have long known, root exudates are not "waste" products from the plant, but rather are substances exuded into the rhizosphere to enhance the uptake of nutrients and to help support the beneficial micro-organisms that live there.

you triggered me to engage in another reading frenzy and i specifically looked at whether or not the plant helps feed the microbes by putting out sugars.

"Plants produce their own sugars through photosynthesis and use it as fuel for cell growth and development. Sugar is also secreted through the roots to activate microbes that help break down nutrients and make them easier for plants to take up. Adding sugar to the feeding program for your indoor garden sets the beneficial microbes on a feeding frenzy, which leads to a dramatic increase in their population."

also, the sugars act as chelators to aid in nutrient uptake.

taken from https://www.saferbrand.com/articles/sugar-molasses-hydroponics.

so, from this i think that the plant by itself keeps the original population going but, as you said, adding some food to the program periodically does increase the number of beneficials.

i think i will try it this round as i'm just ending the third week of flowering. i will add some fresh EWC to the medium and add some unsulfered blackstrap molasses at the same time.

i believe that some bacteria stayed alive throughout the last grow as i think i saw good results. i think i will add it the the feed tank so it goes in diluted in low dosage amounts.

any thoughts on this?

 

[gmanwho]

hey grey, give it a shot. If possible, I just dont like the idea of possibly feeding the wrong population. I would rather take that out of the equation. im uneducated enough, an I dont scope my microbes(even thou i have the equipment on hand, i just dont know enough yet, next step i guess).

With keeping away things that may ferment or go rancid in your system, like fish hydrolysate; humic or fulvics can be another food source. read some interesting things about fulvics over time.

I always read conflicting things. What holds always true? i guess thats why i'll go back to what has seemed to show improvement in some way or another.

I still always revert back to http://microbeorganics.com/ lots of good info there. Some detailed and some not so detailed. Kinda a nice rounded over introduction. Thou, my understanding is elementary at best.

an regards to the nitrogen with biochar, i feel there is so much nitrogen in my nutrient it wouldn't matter much and the benefits would out weigh.

Along with the humic / fulvic, Another thing i would recommend is an amino acid powder, sea kelp powder. the sea kelp can really lush things up. An tbh its abit pricey but it goes a long way, recharge beneficial powder.

recharge by realgrowers. usually amazon or ebay best price.
Ferti-organic Fulvic-plus. Fert-organic makes a few other products i will be trying like their humic and seaweed. east coast shipping try 7springsfarm.com. middle an western usa go with customhydronutrients. If you haven't already visited custom hydro nutrients i suggest a visit to avengers(IC Member) website!

Im all about quality /concentration / strength , less shipping vs water weight, so i like powders or crystals and not watered down versions. But organic molasses crystals is a great addition. lots of bang for buck too. and less messy by 1000 percent.

I would like to setup a worm farm again.
I have a 60-70 gal garden compost barrel im eager to drain and bring the liquid up 150-160f for some hours and see what i can get from that liquid gold. Also got about 30 gallons of rabbit manure eager to turn into castings.

 

[gmanwho]

 

[gmanwho]

8 ethos plant of the grapes. aka POG or POTG from now on. 2 Plants to One 15gal soil/coco organic amended mix with a few feedings of my indoor food schedule when needed. Choose smaller pots so i can keep them closer to the house and bring them inside if needed. An i did bring them in twice so far, the left over hurricane and a 3-4 day rain event.

So I put them outside aug 15, so im rolling with aug 16 was day 1. POG is Grape Diamonds x I95. (Grape diamonds was an expression found in the "member berry line"). Fem seeds. I have another 10 pack in storage.

I know there's was some issue's with some of ethos lines. Herm or this or that was poor for whatever. Or his "said character". Then there are other lines that knock it out if the park.

If im not mistaken, I believe there are multiple growers, and a few branches of people that work under ethos collective. im not fully sure tbh. Im here for the plants, and Im giving the plants the benefit of the doubt.

I did a little research some time ago and i liked what i saw. An why not, a beautiful structure & trich coverage with grape smells & taste. And hopfully the I95 / chem genetics provide the punch to otherwise what might be considered chick weed. Just maybe, an so i rolled the dice...

An after all, now that i can grow some outdoor as an excuse to find new plants. Test new seeds and then possibly run them indoors. An the key thing here is to not take away from the indoor prime real estate, and leave that to production for the most part.

There are absolutely 5 of the 8 i would run again, maybe more. In no particular order. and most of these pics are day 50-55. gonna see how long the weather plays along an any mold stays away. Basically im splitting them into 2 expressions, purple an green, then other points of interest.

Getting grape and rubber vapor smells on them. Some grape stardawg / chem vapor smells. and also some sort of melon and chem vapors. smells are getting deeper an not so floral or sweet as before. A deeper grape meets rubber maybe. smells are different to everyone

So far im pretty happy with the senescence of my mix or feedings. seems to be on par with the surrounding landscape.

Left pog, right plant is Ice Cream cake. Italian fig plants getting ready to drop their leaves. All rest of photos are POG.

 

[greyfader]

i grew planet of the grapes, candy store, and orange kush cake. only one pack of each which may explain my results. all three strains were vigorous and filthy covered in trichs but were quite bland in the flavor department. out of 30 plants, one of the orange kush cakes had a strong terp profile. they all had decent potency.

 

[gmanwho]

Failures and teachings. But some reallyyyyy fucking interesting morphology caused by internal pathogens!!

So this was abit interesting. This was the LED cmh room that i was running fam95 in. I had a major problem earlier with not providing enough run off or to high of an EC for room conditions, a combo of multiple things. K lockout. Mag deficiency / lockout / antagonism. Super high sodium and chloride levels, high sulfur, high nitrogen. my run off was in 3500ppm or 7ec range by my runoff analysis.

I corrected with a bunch of flushes and slight nute changeup. started using mag nitrate in ratio with mag sulfate. mag issues somewhat corrected.

But i think one flush really set me into the decline. I ended plugging the drain, an let the plants soak for about an hour in fresh 100ppm well water. I may have aggravated a pre existing condition and forced pathogens further into the roots. Also my transplanting i did not set the crown of the stem high into the new medium. I did not remove my original rockwool rooters. my drippers where close to the stem.

A combination of all above along with a possible pre existing systemic pathogen in the clone caused a white to light grey mold to form inside my main plant stems. I believe at this point it was sclerotinia. Stem rot. I also noticed rust color lessons on the stem base as well.

ultimately changing the morphology of 9 of the 12 plants in the system. Bud structure, petiole length & leaf color, and a smell decline. When i chopped them i noticed the white grey mold inside the stems.

Maybe it was there since the mother, or entered during the cloning phase, entered through an un sterile scissor trimming, a dirty glove, or came in through the water or nutrient, through the room humidifier, somewhere else in the environment? the list is long. And this all lead me to ask myself why did i stop brewing beneficial teas in my reservoirs ???

It can spread from water, handling diseased fruit and vegtables, firewood, fungus knats, water sources , un sanitary scissors or containers. Mother to clone, clone to clone, run off to run off.

these pics where after a 10-12 day of low nute food. 75 or so days of flower

what they all should've somewhat looked like..
Here u can see a non infected. or less infected

Now notice this plant next to the purple squatter cola structures. the purple ones all exhibited internal mold growth in the stems, smaller petiole lengths, decline smells, and some had rust lesions on the stems.

Also interesting as fuck is the purple ones did not want to finish up despite having blocked pathways, note the pistols still popping, leaf rigidity (forget the word) and the lack of color chlorophyll loss despite the low food

Upsetting and interesting all at the same time! One would think it was 2 different cuts all together. those 3 "better plants" yielded 4.2#. the remaining 9 or rest of the room yielded a total of 8#. If i had a complete proper run using the 4.2# numbers, times 4, (12 plants x 22oz per plant) the dried usable yield would have been 16.8#

now to correct the issues

 

[Dequilo]

WOW!!!! what a great read love your place and your work thanks for a look at it

all the best and grow well

S_M

 

[gmanwho]

grey i honestly can say jacks 321 grows great plants, but sucks building and maintaining fragile terpene's. Hence why ive gone down the road to add organic amendments, micros, an other necessary trace elements and microbes an teas. well, at least thats my thought at this point.

the other thing is some of these nutrient companies dont disclose things like Na or Cl on the labels. then things like As or AI levels. Haifa may be the best choice at this point.

 

[gmanwho]

Decided to dedicate 6 led lights to some amended soil. Brought up 200gal of soil to the 2nd floor barn, two 5gal buckets at a time. maybe 2k pounds, or so ?

24 parts to the soil mix. Inputs based of Dank Frank’s recipe he helped me with for my outdoor vegetable garden. I added a few other things i felt where necessary or just curious about and made sense to me. I also Increased p & k 50-75% on some ratios, increased aeration to about 40%.

Dropped 2 peach hashplants to a 50gal of mix in a 100 gal fabric pot. I kinda stretched the pots to match the room layout. At the time I didn’t think round pots made sense. Ther are more of an oval bed now

Some of the last extraction i sent for porcessing. Unknowingly i tilted the jar during the photo and a Lot of terp syrup flowed to other side of the jar. 11% return, Not great but not terrible either, all trim and popcorn lowers from a run of Rootbeer gmo and mac. Smells and tastes like chem / gmo an sweet sandlewood.

 

[gmanwho]

After I put together the fabric pots I realized there was more room. About 3’x8’ of light bars still.

I could’ve done another 2 beds. But I really wanted to try something with more of a soil / hydro approach. So I put together 3 sub irrigated pots with the same soil mix.

17gallon keg type bucket, a bed of perlite , the a 15gal fabric pot placed ontop of the perlite. 10-11 gal of soil. As of now there are no bottom holes in the fabric pot.

Curious if roots will go down through the fabric pot into the perlite.

Bucket has bottom drain, cut some 4in pvc pipe to use as spacers, then added 7in of perlite (about 5gal worth).

shooting for 3in of water or nutrients / drain height. should have 3.5-4in of air gap between water height an fabric pot.

Will take more pics tomorrow. Still haven’t decided on which approach I’m using for the bucket top offs.

Pictured above is the Mettallic Frankensence , nl5 x haze that was over due for transplant and some food. Was hand watered, tip burn most likely from excessive dry backs. Also going into the other sub irrigated planters are GG4 and Point Break

 

[gmanwho]

Fam95 room rocking. Few days into 12/12. Overdue for trellis netting.

Feeding them harder, supplying more feed to runoff every day. Also added 1 gal of perlite to lower drain bucket so roots can venture down out of 2.5g coco bag.

They are wanting more cal even at 3jack/ 3 cal nit & metoslate chelated ca. gypsum an aragonite.

2gpg mag (1g mg nitrate 1g mag sulfate) mkp, agsil 16h, micros, ferti amino, 2 humic sources, ewc tea, seaweed extract, hyshield enzyme (chitosan), pond zyme, recharge. rice hulls