My Adventures with Ace Genetics & Living Soil Bed

[tjmccoy]

As I continue to grow Mostly Ace genetics in a living soil kiddy pool sip design. I hope to share info about my grows and plants, with out hijacking other threads!

I’ll start with where it’s at now, It’s a “Sub Irrigated Planter” that I made out of common Kiddy Pools. It holds about 100 gallons of soil and the reservoir holds about 30gallons of water. The soil started as a rich super soil mix, happy frog, rabbit manure, castings xl perlite.
There’s a good red worm population that has helped work and to break down every single bit of extra plant matter stems leaves roots added from last 2 grows!

It’s currently in a cover crop of oats and clover, My thoughts on using the cover crop is to help bring balance to the soil bed and keep it breathing. So far I’m loving how this soil looks and feels with all the new fibrous roots it just looks alive feels soft and spongy like a forest floor! I even have volunteer malawis coming up happily in the grass and clover hahaaa but they’re getting plucked!

Gearing up for a new run soon!

 

[tjmccoy]

Currently smoking on Malawi Bubble, and some just dried enough to smoke Kali China Outdoor

 

[Cactus Squatter]

That looks awesome!
So do you let your soil bed rest between runs? Or when you cut one run do you just go right into an open space with new plants?

 

[tjmccoy]

The start of a new adventure!

Popping about 5 of each of these in a 50 cell tray! I’m planning to treat these like mother/father plants from day one, pinching pruning, and running clones for selections in the living soil sip bed!

I was really happy with how big and dark and mature the outdoor seeds got! Surely something good in here

That looks awesome!
So do you let your soil bed rest between runs? Or when you cut one run do you just go right into an open space with new plants?

Thanks Man, Learning as I go, I wasn’t perpetual yet so there was down time. I am curious to see how the cover crop changes things

My thoughts are the decaying side of soil biology is only half the story, there’s a whole other side of biology that only lives with living roots present, with their host plant. If to achieve high biodiversity I’m going to need living plants. That’s my thinking, we’ll see how that works in my kiddy pools! Hahaaa

 

[tjmccoy]

 

[tjmccoy]

Playing Spin the wheel!

 

[ledo]

Playing Spin the wheel!

View attachment 18912066

I’d fuck her

 

[tjmccoy]

Here’s a zoomed in crop of each!

 

[Normannen]

 

[tjmccoy]

I gave the soil bed a little bit of fresh rooster nugget tea, getting kinda wooly in there! I plan to chop and incorporate into the top 4 inches, along with lime and gypsum, feed every thing back in a few weeks.

Oats in farming are known to loosen soil with lots of shallow fibrous roots, Most grains have a somewhat oxidizing effect on soil but oats have the opposite effect of reducing soil making more minerals more plant available. They host mycorrhizae fungi and known to attract earth worms!

My sip bed works pretty much like an earth box, same idea, part of the soil packed down in an area of the reservoir acts as a wick. One problem with these are they generally run too wet for transplants, once roots are fully established you can run it wet, but I’m finding out with transplants you have to dry the reservoir out, let the bed dry out a little. I’m now wondering if a managed understory companion crop could help suck up the extra moisture and not have to stop the wicking for a while.

 

[tjmccoy]

Rooster and I smoking a bowl of Malawi!

 

[RobFromTX]

Really cool stuff you're doing with that soil. Honduras x panama is probably my favorite ace strain, atleast tied with honduras. My very last bud of her from last summer

 

[tjmccoy]

Really cool stuff you're doing with that soil. Honduras x panama is probably my favorite ace strain, atleast tied with honduras. My very last bud of her from last summer

Thanks Rob! Wow! That indeed looks like you found a great pheno in the HxP! I unfortunately didn’t find any phenos like that, so far it’s my least favorite but just goes to show I can’t make judgements about a strain when I only grow a few seeds!

 

[tjmccoy]

Today had a fire going and was digging some holes, I thought it would be fun to mix up the clay dirt and try to make something! I ended up making a clay pipe and it turned out surprisingly well! It’s functional and hits really nice! A bowl of Kali China to chrisen this new pipe! Hahaaa

 

[tjmccoy]

I saw a thing on germination called “float tech” and thought what the heck let’s try it and see, since I have lots of extra beans anyway! It’s so simple, they say just drop the seeds in the water and do not disturb at all, just let them sit and float, I don’t know what makes them float, is it a tiny air bubble in the seed or is it that the oil and water don’t mix and it’s sitting on surface tension? It interested me as I’ve soaked seeds before and always swirl them around trying to get them to sink. The idea is they have both air and water if left to float. I’m going to find out because lately my germination rate hasn’t been great. Anyway it’s an easy experiment!

So far at 36hrs I’m seeing germination at least 3 of 10 on these somewhat immature Malawi seeds, the same ones giving me poor germination direct in soil, it could probably go faster with a little heat

 

[Hasch]

Thanks for sharing

I love your living soil kiddy pool and am really into ACE genetics, so am happy to tag along

I read that soaking seeds for more then 24h tends to get them watter clogged, as in they will probably have difficulty sprouting.
But hey, your seeds seem happy there...

 

[RobFromTX]

I saw a thing on germination called “float tech” and thought what the heck let’s try it and see, since I have lots of extra beans anyway! It’s so simple, they say just drop the seeds in the water and do not disturb at all, just let them sit and float, I don’t know what makes them float, is it a tiny air bubble in the seed or is it that the oil and water don’t mix and it’s sitting on surface tension? It interested me as I’ve soaked seeds before and always swirl them around trying to get them to sink. The idea is they have both air and water if left to float. I’m going to find out because lately my germination rate hasn’t been great. Anyway it’s an easy experiment!

So far at 36hrs I’m seeing germination at least 3 of 10 on these somewhat immature Malawi seeds, the same ones giving me poor germination direct in soil, it could probably go faster with a little heat

View attachment 18914154

View attachment 18914155

What strain are these from tj?

 

[tjmccoy]

Thanks for sharing

I love your living soil kiddy pool and am really into ACE genetics, so am happy to tag along

I read that soaking seeds for more then 24h tends to get them watter clogged, as in they will probably have difficulty sprouting.
But hey, your seeds seem happy there...

Thanks for tagging along Hasch! I’m very random plans never work for me so I just go along by the seat of my pants lol

Yeah this is a little different since they’re floating, I will report back with the final germ rate and how it went, I couldn’t help myself to put more seeds in again today, working towards a big selection!

What strain are these from tj?

Hey in the pics here are Malawi, f2’s I made, it’s probably actually an f3 or f4 now can’t remember what Dubi said the regular Malawi’s were at. Have you tried Malawi yet?

 

[tjmccoy]

In just a few more hours, they are still floating and there is 10 of 10 showing a tap root using the float method, on the same seed I had poor germination directly in soil! Not saying this is a miracle or anything, for whatever reason I haven’t been nailing germ like I used to in soil, what happens when I get over confident But still 100% are popping and that is a great first result!

 

[goingrey]

I saw a thing on germination called “float tech” and thought what the heck let’s try it and see, since I have lots of extra beans anyway! It’s so simple, they say just drop the seeds in the water and do not disturb at all, just let them sit and float, I don’t know what makes them float, is it a tiny air bubble in the seed or is it that the oil and water don’t mix and it’s sitting on surface tension? It interested me as I’ve soaked seeds before and always swirl them around trying to get them to sink. The idea is they have both air and water if left to float. I’m going to find out because lately my germination rate hasn’t been great. Anyway it’s an easy experiment!

So far at 36hrs I’m seeing germination at least 3 of 10 on these somewhat immature Malawi seeds, the same ones giving me poor germination direct in soil, it could probably go faster with a little heat

View attachment 18914154

View attachment 18914155

I use a similar method where they float for a day or so, then I tap them once with my finger If it sinks, I plant it. If it doesn't, more floating. Sometimes a day is enough for the tail to peek out and the tap test is not needed.