Living organic soil from start through recycling

[W89]

Worm farming is great I love messin about with my worms haha but yeah I chuck all sorts in there... when I have a cuppa I chuck the teabag in there when I eat some fruit/veg I just chuck in straight in there I like to play mini basket ball with my food items as my worm bin is in my room in the corner and it has no lid... lol

Everything left over from teas go in... I added about 1.5kg of used coffee last week and Ive been adding comfrey too

 

[Gascanastan]

Hey Microbeman...have you ever added a little basalt to your bioreactor teas? I find meself wondering if the minerals and whatever energy force is in that stuff would not help multiply microbes.

Cootz...do you use aloe in your worm bins...food for bacteria/fungi/protozoa and they are all food for worms. Or how about enzyme teas when you add water...jack up the metabolism on all the living things in there.

I recently made an ACT out of compost and ROLS...definite basalt and glacial rock dust particulates in there..along with everything else.
Act worked great...but EWC still kicks ass.

 

[RanchoDeluxe]

^^^
So what ingredient do you use in your ACT's ? Just curious.

 

[Gascanastan]

^^^
So what ingredient do you use in your ACT's ? Just curious.

Compost or EWC usually a 50/50 of each. If I want more fungal action I'll use fish. If I want it to go a little slower,I'll use some kelp.
Not MM's exact recipe,but once you brew some ACTs for a few years you can get the idea that microbial sources are where it's at,and what you add,and what temps determines the behavior of the brew.

If I want to warm it up....if the brewer is in a colder area,or whatever environmental circumstances determine so.......I'll put the ol space heater next to it...you know in the middle of winter during the dark cycle some peoples brewers may get colder than a fucking aquarium heater will take care of.
Because some people use like 55 gallons of ACT at one time...and refilling a resevoir with cold ass rainwater definitely will take a while to get that water up to temp even in an 85 degree room...where you just happen to be using 80 gallons of water for your plants every 3 days.

However,I digress.........

Whatever microbial rich material I can find really for the most part. The ROLS mixed with compost fills the requirements.

I actually mixed the ROLS/Compost with a bit of fish meal and straw.
Fish for fungal growth,and the straw to create surface area around the materials in the bag.


Sometimes I'll do a little alfalfa....really though it's about what materials I have that will get the job done the right way. I tend to listen to CT and MM....

 

[Durdy]

Does anyone have any experience with using the C.A.P. fabric pots?
What are they made out of and where are they produced?
All my google searches just turn up hydro sites selling them, not information about them.

I usually go Smartpot but can get the C.A.P ones cheaper.

 

[MrSterling]

YS, I add the barley sprouts themselves into worm bins wet after draining the water. They seemed to spur a huge amount of fungal activity, although I didn't turn them in quite well enough and found foot tall barley growing out of one worm bin this week. Unbelievable.

 

[xmobotx]

MrS i have done the same thing tossing the sprouts in a tote of compost brought inside to keep it active over the winter

cant speak to the effect but it seems like a good step

 

[canniption]

It is all about the cation exchange capacity. I could not force myself to read this the way you wrote it but...

If your soil has a total cec of 10 it will hold x amount of cations. If tec is 20 it will hold 2x...60 6x, etc. As long as those cations are held by the cec sites and the anions are held by the humus/living things you will never need to flush. The plant will send sugars to the soil and the soil will give up what the plant needs...no mo.

If you overfill the cec sites then the soil will start to build up salts. At that point the plant cannot take up exactly what it needs...it kinda gets overwhelmed.

This is why low cec hydro grows have to flush...they overfed the plant cause they are not as smart as nature which has had millions of yrs to tweak things and get it right.

So as long as the EC in your soil is not over 1 or 1.5...no worries. If it is then you are in for some bad tasting stuff.

thanks for the lesson on cec YS,i understand cec.sorry for the poorly composed post,i'll delete it.

 

[BlueJayWay]

Just edit it with the space bar.

 

[ClackamasCootz]

Vonforne

Midwest Organic Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) - might be a good resource for your part of the world. They have a monthly publication Organic Broadcaster and perhaps some of the materials you were asking about (Tibetan Barley) might be covered or at least referenced.

Lots of good links as well

CC

Approved by Honey Boo Boo and her immediate family......

 

[YosemiteSam]

So me indoor grow just happens to be 65 gallon pots (the state limits me plant count but not me ambition). I wonder if this could possibly be a candidate for a NTLOS (no till living organic soil) grow?

I have been moving inexorably in that direction over time...almost like a force of nature pulling me that way. There is no use fighting the pull of the great magnet

 

[rasputin]

That is a beautiful plant, Sam! What exactly are we looking at?

 

[YosemiteSam]

It is a fairly good commercial plant...Mob Boss...Chem x Blockhead. The enzyme teas do make it shine.

 

[Gascanastan]

Tibetan purple barley...soaked 12 hrs,rinsed,then spread over this moistened coffee bag...... which will be folded over the seeds and left on the floor in the 80 degree 24 hr veg. Should see sprouts in a day or two...

 

[BlueJayWay]

View attachment 207889

View attachment 207890

So me indoor grow just happens to be 65 gallon pots (the state limits me plant count but not me ambition). I wonder if this could possibly be a candidate for a NTLOS (no till living organic soil) grow?

I have been moving inexorably in that direction over time...almost like a force of nature pulling me that way. There is no use fighting the pull of the great magnet

Yosemite Sam - Nice!

I like the way you think, $5 kiddy pool vs. $200 hydrofarm plastic tray


Maybe Im misreading, but are you contemplating using this conainer, unscathed, in your next run? i.e. the NoTill reference. I say absolutely! I mess around with many difference sizes (no-till) and I was just thinking today that my largest container, the #45 smart-pot easily outperforms any others. Definitely an ease-of-use aspect to them.

(****AH, now I know what Mob Boss is, looks like a nice plant for sure!)

 

[ClackamasCootz]

YosemiteSam

Beautiful garden! Got enough buds? LOL

CC

 

[ClackamasCootz]

Gascan

You like using cloth over the usual sprouting jar? I picked-up a couple of the mung bean sprouting bags from the tofu shop. A friend's wife is sewing up a couple of rips & tears so I'm a few days away from trying them out.

CC

 

[ClackamasCootz]

A War Without End, With Earth's Carbon Cycle Held in the Balance - Science Daily

The greatest battle in Earth's history has been going on for hundreds of millions of years -- it isn't over yet -- and until now no one knew it existed, scientists reported Feb. 13 in the journal Nature.

In one corner is SAR11, a bacterium that's the most abundant organism in the oceans, survives where most other cells would die and plays a major role in the planet's carbon cycle. It had been theorized that SAR11 was so small and widespread that it must be invulnerable to attack.

In the other corner, and so strange-looking that scientists previously didn't even recognize what they were, are "Pelagiphages," viruses now known to infect SAR11 and routinely kill millions of these cells every second. And how this fight turns out is of more than casual interest, because SAR11 has a huge effect on the amount of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere, and the overall biology of the oceans.

"There's a war going on in our oceans, a huge war, and we never even saw it," said Stephen Giovannoni, a professor of microbiology at Oregon State University. "This is an important piece of the puzzle in how carbon is stored or released in the sea."

Researchers from OSU, the University of Arizona and other institutions have just outlined the discovery of this ongoing conflict, and its implications for the biology and function of ocean processes. The findings disprove the theory that SAR11 cells are immune to viral predation, researchers said.

"In general, every living cell is vulnerable to viral infection," said Giovannoni, who first discovered SAR11 in 1990. "What has been so puzzling about SAR11 was its sheer abundance; there was simply so much of it that some scientists believed it must not get attacked by viruses."

What the new research shows, Giovannoni said, is that SAR11 is competitive, good at scavenging organic carbon, and effective at changing to avoid infection. Because of that, it thrives and persists in abundance even though it's constantly being killed by the new viruses that have been discovered.

The discovery of the Pelagiphage viral families was made by Yanlin Zhao, Michael Schwalbach and Ben Temperton, OSU postdoctoral researchers working with Giovannoni. They used traditional research methods, growing cells and viruses from nature in a laboratory, instead of sequencing DNA from nature. The new viruses were so unique that computers could not recognize the virus DNA.

"The viruses themselves, of course, appear to be just as abundant as SAR11," Giovannoni said. "Our colleagues at the University of Arizona demonstrated this with new technologies they developed for measuring viral diversity."

SAR11 has several unique characteristics, including the smallest known genetic structure of any independent cell. Through sheer numbers, this microbe has a huge role in consuming organic carbon, which it uses to generate energy while producing carbon dioxide and water in the process. SAR11 recycles organic matter, providing the nutrients needed by algae to produce about half of the oxygen that enters Earth's atmosphere every day.

This carbon cycle ultimately affects all plant and animal life on Earth.

 

[rasputin]

Wow. That's wild. Nice post, Cootz.

 

[Gascanastan]

Gascan

You like using cloth over the usual sprouting jar? I picked-up a couple of the mung bean sprouting bags from the tofu shop. A friend's wife is sewing up a couple of rips & tears so I'm a few days away from trying them out.

CC

Saw it on 'Moonshiners'..then thar boys wa a usin dem burlap sacks fer sproutin barley down der to make scotch whiskey.

That combined with your info. on the mung beans....I'm a gonna' give it a whirl here for the first time.

I can get these big ass coffee bags for $1 each.