Organic Fanatic Collective

[MrSterling]

Ugh, the internet ate my post when I hit submit. TLR - I found out my red wigglers really love the dried-out pieces of food my mealworms leave behind. I suspect it's kinda like bokashi.

 

[Scrappy4]

How do you guys feel about the General Organics products? I would never buy anything from GH, but I have 2 friends that use the whole line and swear by it, they say "it's so easy" (shrug, sigh, scratch head) true Jorge/hydro shop growers... I see plenty of people using that shit here, but I was wondering if any true "organic fanatics" actually use it, or if it is as gimmicky as it seems...

Well there is that, pouring from a bottle is easy. But covering comfrey/nettles/dandelions/horsetail and others with water and letting it sit for a month is relatively easy too, stinky but easy peasy. But if that's just too much, those herbs dried and bubbled in a bucket over night just might be more doable for the grow challenged wanna be bud meister. And if even that is too much, there is always adding these herbs to the soil and letting the soil microbes break it down. Easy than that' they might want to have the despensary fill their needs.....scrappy (typed from my easy chair)

 

[jerry111165]

hahah exactly what I thought... thanks coot! I learned a lot from one of these dudes, he inherited the first edition "indoor bible" and that is where I learned early on. As I read more and got more into a quest for the ultimate dank, I found that much of the info is not only outdated, but it was never even true in the first place. I try to help and teach him, but he is very stuck in his ways. He was so excited to tell me he got a bottle of some poison that is illegal to sell here so he can apply it to his plants to kill mites. I pretty much gave up on him at that point...


On a positive note, I dumped all my used soiless mix (from my Jorge days), yard waste and kitchen scrapes in a pile and the worms just came. I flip that all the time, add whatever I can find that seems good (rock dusts from rock hounding adventures, seaweed and shells from a day at the beach, maybe some exotic looking fungal mass I found in the soil somewhere in an old growth forest) I filled a one gallon pot yesterday by hand picking out some of the most humus and worm rich soil for my favorite strain, which I am trying to overload with organics (progressively more humus and less inert matter/aeration each round) and she cannot get enough. I will get some pics up in this thread, she is a true organic fanatic!

The growth in one day is explosive. The soil is mucky, heavy, and saturated, but stays moving because there is at least 2 dozen worms in the gallon pot. How could it get any easier than that?

You'd do much, much better if it wasn't mucky and heavy. Add some peat and aeration and your plant will thank you for it.

J

 

[hope2toke]

although it is really neat to see how worms work. They actually like "aeration amendments" I think! at least if there is over-adequate water flow in the planter/container.

 

[jubiare]

Greetings to you all!


I am currently at my first organic grow, I am here at last eheh!
As base mix I went for coco coir not for peat...
I am having conflicting results, one plant is doing well, the other less well.

My question is: is anybody having great results to confirm/share with coco + organic?

Is it true many have had issues?

I am wondering if I should use a mix of coco and peat moss next time

Many thanks
j
________

 

[rrog]

I like the recipes here: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=241964

 

[Swayze]

jubiare,

I used close to a 50/50 coco/peat base mix this round and I have no complaints about it. I like the idea of peat in the mix because i like diversity and I haven't heard anything bad about it.

I wouldn't worry about one plant doing better than another in the same mix. Plants are like us, they're all snowflakes. Some are heavy feeder, others light, some like a lot of water, others do better in drier conditions.

So your base mix is probably fine as long it was good coco and not salty. If you've been keeping them on the same schedule, watering/feeding wise, maybe continue with the one that is doing better and give the other one some time and space. Check the conditions of both plants. Do both get equal amounts of light on them and the soil. I mention the soil because if one has more light hitting the soil than the other, the shaded one may not need watering as often and may become overwatered.

Best of luck

 

[jubiare]

hey swayze sorry, havent thanked you. I see what you are saying, just hoped someone else would chime in in regards to coco and why some finds it great and others problematic. I suspect there is something to do with washing it well and preferably not using tap water.

I have given up on the moss because of the sustainable issue ... what I am gonna do is using coco with aged nursery bark. Anyone any thought on that?

 

[Microbeman]

I think if you research properly you may find the stories of the insustainability of peatmoss have been greatly inflated, possibly to boost sales of other media. I'd rather use something with a humus component to it (like peatmoss) rather than the outer shell of a nut. Composted bark/wood fines seems pretty decent. How about soil?

 

[jubiare]

mmmmm.... not sure about that Mr! Maybe in Canada, but here in Europe it is made quite clear that mining peat is not sustainable. I am still open to the debate though, but aint going to use it for now. There is here a product that is peat naturally forming at the source of a river. It is than collected by filters. I wander how the quality is of this, I assume the sphagnum type is better!

My base mix is now this:
-1 part coco coir
- 1 part nursery aged bark
- 1 part growstones (half perlite I had already acquired)
- 1 part EWC

x every gallon of soiless mix I add:
- 15ml biochar (not sure maybe more is better?)
- 15ml Dolomite limestone
- 15 ml rock phosphate
- 15ml Zeolite
- 15ml Rock dust
- 15ml granite dust

 

[W89]

where are your nutrients?

 

[Microbeman]

mmmmm.... not sure about that Mr! Maybe in Canada, but here in Europe it is made quite clear that mining peat is not sustainable. I am still open to the debate though, but aint going to use it for now. There is here a product that is peat naturally forming at the source of a river. It is than collected by filters. I wander how the quality is of this, I assume the sphagnum type is better!

My base mix is now this:
-1 part coco coir
- 1 part nursery aged bark
- 1 part growstones (half perlite I had already acquired)
- 1 part EWC

x every gallon of soiless mix I add:
- 15ml biochar (not sure maybe more is better?)
- 15ml Dolomite limestone
- 15 ml rock phosphate
- 15ml Zeolite
- 15ml Rock dust
- 15ml granite dust

Sorry. I thought we were discussing Canadian Sphagnum peatmoss. Is there another kind?

 

[MileHighGuy]

@ Jubiare - How do you grow anything in that mix?

And red text? Come on Buddy

 

[MileHighGuy]

Found this:

This information has been readily available for 20 years from the Canadian Spaghnum Peat Moss Association. The bugaboo in all this is that in Europe peat moss is definitely not a renewable resource. As soon as a writer reads about European peat moss, they extend the same assumption over to the Canadian peat. At least now everybody in southeastern Michigan knows the straight skinny.

Over Here http://gardenrant.com/2010/12/jeff-ball-comes-to-the-defense-of-peat-moss.html

 

[ClackamasCootz]

This information has been readily available for 20 years from the Canadian Spaghnum Peat Moss Association. The bugaboo in all this is that in Europe peat moss is definitely not a renewable resource. As soon as a writer reads about European peat moss, they extend the same assumption over to the Canadian peat. At least now everybody in southeastern Michigan knows the straight skinny.

MHG

There is also a political component to the European (Ireland) peat moss discussion. In Irish rural areas and in older factories, peat moss is an important heating source.

Not that the British & Irish didn't already have enough to disagree about already - LOL

CC

 

[vjbunny]

Hey V, Glad you liked that. Here is another similar one. This one is a bit hmmm, foul...especially for vegans...lol...
http://www.agri-history.org/pdf/AGRI.pdf

Hi
Have any of u downloaded this book wld love to hv this now the link says ithe site not avlbl ...Pls help

 

[vjbunny]

Hi, I found some pretty interesting ancient organic tea recipes.
The entire pdf is available here:
http://www.agri-history.org/pdf/Organic_tea.pdf

Sasyagavya
The first preparation was Sasyagavya (sasya = plant product; gavya = obtained from cow) wherein all the weeds
were chopped and fermented in water along with cow dung and mixed well by continuous stirring. This was
prepared in four days and strained through an aluminium strainer, which was also a scrap in the tea garden till
then. The well-strained liquid was used for drenching the soil near the tea bushes. Considering the manurial
requirements of about eighty acres (32.4 ha) of the tea estate, various preparations using many ‘wastes’ were
developed. Hence, all types of purchases of any type of organic manures, insecticides, growth promoters, etc.
from the market were banned. This surprised my host. But he did respond positively to this proposal.

Dhanyagavya
A major surprise was the preparation of liquid silica from rice husk. This was made by fermenting rice husk in
cow urine, and rice husk in cow dung and water separately for one month and strained later. Proper care was
taken to stir the contents well at least twice a day. Both the preparations were allowed to ferment for one month.
It was found that the strained extract had silica in liquid form. The rice husk extract in cow urine had 0.19% of
silica, whereas the extract in cow dung had 0.35% of silica in soluble form. There was a threat of fungal attack
on tea bushes at that time. Hence, this preparation(s) was used along with Sasyagavya to drench the soil. Thus
the simple farm-level method of extraction of liquid silica was developed using the Vrikshayurveda methods
and with my own reading and understanding. Later the preparation was named as Dhanyagavya.
When I started my project of Vrikshayurveda treatment for tea, I had not known much about tea bushes or their
problems. In fact, I just started by treating the tea bush as any other bush.
Chimmigavya
Fermenting chopped fern leaves in cow urine or cow dung with water was the next preparation. Both can be
used as insecticidal sprays at ten percent solution, which also act as growth promoters. In fact, the Chimmigavya
made out of cow dung and fern leaves was found to function both as manure and an insecticide. This was
successfully tried in Jia Estate for the whole season of 2004.

***

A pretty cool read, in its entirety.

Thaiphoon
Wonderful share Hv u down loaded the pdf? Can u share with me pls chkd the above mentioned link its not working now