Mulch. Just do it.

[t33to]

I would use them along with normal watering (just less frequent). it's important to really drench the soil once in a while.

my favorite method is to use a pump sprayer to water the soil.

remember also, you need room under your canopy or you need a smaller bottle.

Thanks for the tips man. I gotta say, I was pretty turned off from ICmag for a little while because I kept getting responses from complete assholes on these Forums but you Organic guys are a different breed, so kind and so willing to share information.

Back on topic. Do you find that the Living Mulch depletes water much quicker? It's kind of strange for me to think about because I presume Mulch normally acts as a moisture barrier and prevents the soil from drying out and Living Mulch would drink up water?

 

[mad librettist]

Do you find that the Living Mulch depletes water much quicker?

my casual observations indoors indicate less water lost over time compared to regular mulch and no mulch. Put your finger in a living mulch and you feel right away how much cooler and more moist it is compared to bare soil.


outdoors, it's just a fact that ground cover keeps water and nutrients in place, reducing those inputs drastically.

 

[Bennyweed1]

Just ordered 2lb of white dutch clover seed on Amazon for $18.19 shipped. I was going to buy the N-Dure but I opted not too. I can not wait to get these seeds started in my soil beds.

Do I plant the clover before my host plant or do I plant them together?

http://www.amazon.com/White-Dutch-C...=A3KP4PUPMP96T0&ie=UTF8&qid=1329213887&sr=1-1

And I want this.....

http://www.amazon.com/Davids-Garden...GUZI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329213929&sr=8-1

 

[mad librettist]

Just ordered 2lb of white dutch clover seed on Amazon for $18.19 shipped. I was going to buy the N-Dure but I opted not too. I can not wait to get these seeds started in my soil beds.

Do I plant the clover before my host plant or do I plant them together?

http://www.amazon.com/White-Dutch-C...=A3KP4PUPMP96T0&ie=UTF8&qid=1329213887&sr=1-1

And I want this.....

http://www.amazon.com/Davids-Garden...GUZI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329213929&sr=8-1

i like to establish the mulch before adding cannabis

 

[Funion]

Enjoyed reading the highpoints of this thread. I'm going to try chia seeds for a lark. Thank you for the insight!

 

[Bennyweed1]

Hey mad I finally got my mulch going. I am pretty excited about it and dont entirely know what to expect as far as height and chopping goes. I still have to read up on photoperiods for this cover crop.

My understanding is white clover is a perennial but when grown inside acts like a annual. So in order to be a annual it has to produce a flower, then die off. What light schedule triggers white clover to flower?

 

[mad librettist]

it will usually flower when days get longer than 12 hours.

so veg for cannabis = flower for clover.

 

[Bennyweed1]

it will usually flower when days get longer than 12 hours.

so veg for cannabis = flower for clover.

Damn why does it have to be ass backwards?

So soil beds constantly in a 12/12 cycle will cause this clover to spread and not die off I take it?

 

[jaykush]

So soil beds constantly in a 12/12 cycle will cause this clover to spread and not die off I take it?

you act like thats a bad thing, it can be chopped back and dropped for mulch whenever you please. this adds organic matter to your soil and feeds your plants.

 

[mad librettist]

exactly Jay.

Not to mention even if you don't chop, if your cannabis and clover are hosting the same AM fungus, they can trade nutes.

you'll probably get some white clover flowers here and there under 12/12.

also, unless you have some light reaching the living mulch it will die back (I use an LED)

 

[Bennyweed1]

the 12/12 isnt a bad thing, but if I leave the beds in my veg tent (18/6) it will cause the clover to flower and act like an annual? So using clover on mother plants will result in sowing seeds periodically?

 

[mad librettist]

you know we have a living mulch thread...


I'll answer there and let this one be what it is.

 

[mad librettist]

the 12/12 isnt a bad thing, but if I leave the beds in my veg tent (18/6) it will cause the clover to flower and act like an annual? So using clover on mother plants will result in sowing seeds periodically?

well if you expect the clover to seed itself you need pollinators. Maybe the q-tip method will work, but I've never pollinated clover so can' t comment.



clover is a great companion for mother plants - keeps the soil structure going.


try this - 2 weeks before harvest, put down some clover seed. then when you move the pot back to 18/6, the clover takes off.

 

[Bennyweed1]

well if you expect the clover to seed itself you need pollinators. Maybe the q-tip method will work, but I've never pollinated clover so can' t comment.



clover is a great companion for mother plants - keeps the soil structure going.


try this - 2 weeks before harvest, put down some clover seed. then when you move the pot back to 18/6, the clover takes off.

Mad thanks for catching my goof....I was posting in the wrong mulch thread. My bad.

I guess I am still a little confused then. If I use clover on mom plants....that will never be flowered, left under 18/6 for years. Will the clover act like a annual needing to be sowed every couple of months? I mean MMJ cant be grown forever under 12/12 but left under 18/6 it acts like a perennial so I assume it is the same for clover but clover is a perennial so when it does die off from the 18/6 period would it come back from the stolons if put under 12/12?

 

[mad librettist]

I think you are going to have to try it and let us know!

my hunch is that without a change in photoperiod they will just keep going and going from stolons.

in the south, it's supposed to behave like an annual, but they have a change in day length

 

[Bennyweed1]

I think you are going to have to try it and let us know!

my hunch is that without a change in photoperiod they will just keep going and going from stolons.

in the south, it's supposed to behave like an annual, but they have a change in day length

Well what do you do with your mothers? (Assuming you have some)

 

[mad librettist]

i like to bonsai them,

i haven't kept a mother since I started living mulching though

 

[Bennyweed1]

Well I planted a cover mulch on my momma plants. I am so fascinated by this clover, I literally cant check on my girls enough now. Thanks for sharing this great wealth of knowledge!

The moms are under 18/6, lit by an LED.

This mom has a layer of castings on her.

And here are my soils beds. The clover is coming along nicely in these as well. I added worms to the middle bin, that should be interesting.

 

[heady blunts]

wooo!! i'm ready to join the club!

i've got rhizobium coated clover seeds: crimson, rose, and white dutch.

i also picked up buckwheat and and annual variety of ryegrass.

i'll be sowing them in my cab (running mini beds this round) and in my veggie garden.

anyway, thanks for tipping me off. i'm excited for the experiment!

one question: since i'll be germinating these in my flowering cab for a few weeks before i transplant any cannabis in there, what's the lowest daylight cycle they will sprout in?

 

[tuinman]

It's been awhile since I've lurked around ICMag so here's a nice big ~effort post~ on mulch that I hope someone (that was as clueless as myself earlier in the thread) may find helpful some day. I'm currently doing a 'lazy grow' where I'm just using FFOF mixed with a bag of earthworm castings and nothing else.

Unfortunately, I went way too lazy and didn't mulch the tops of my pots! I'd love to do a living mulch here (and do on other projects) but these pots are small (1g airpots) and I was, of course, being lazy. This is something you totally should not be lazy with!

Quick note: I have all of these pictures at 5000x resolution if anyone wants copies, the album shrunk everything down and it might lose some clarity.

And here's why! First shot is just my crusty soil surface. I planted these tiny tiny OG Kush rooted cuts from a friend a couple of weeks back and had already lost a few - the 400w CMHs I'm using just blasted the soil surface into a dry dead zone.

You can see the cracking right around the root riot (I know, I know) plug I was using, ugh. Terrible. No contact between my plug and the soil, lots of root possibilities were lost there! No wonder it's so scrawny still.

Before I start fixing this ugly problem, here's a quick "Why this sucks" under normal circumstances. Even if you use bigger cuts, and bury them deeper, you're still going to have to deal with this little issue; water just sitting on the soil surface and not going anywhere. This sucks. In this picture the water has been beaded up like this for 30 seconds. Either you go ahead and pour a bit on the surface of every pot and let it soak in, then add more while hand watering later to finish - this works, but you'll develop runs and channels and there'll probably be dry spots in your root zone anyways, it's just a big waste of pot space.

Here's the water skin at 60 seconds, jeez, still just sitting there. In case you're wondering about the color this is blackstrap molasses, a big healthy pour of activated EM-1, and a tiny bit of Pro-Tekt Silicone.

Here's the water again about 30 seconds later, I've added some more, and some of it has actually soaked in. As you can see though there's still tons of water just floating around on the surface, definitely no good. As you'll see in a second that's a solid 2" of no good soil and in small pots like this that's a big impact.

Okay now that I've made a case for why-mulch here's what I did to fix it. I used a fork, and gently stuck it directly down into the surface and twisted slightly to break the surface with the minimal amount of disruption. In this picture I'm lifting up a 'chunk' of dried out soil, this stuff is really resistant to soaking and tends to let water 'run' around it instead of through it, perpetuating your dead zones.

Damn! I can only post 6 pictures per post, so I stripped out all of the fun smilies and I'll get the rest of the pictures going in the second one.