Organic Fanatics - Australia

[wilbur]

yerp. they are goin in de ground! they are going to grow huge and I won't have to water them once (can't anyway, they're too remote). none of them will be males or sex-altered. they will make me a happy man for quite a while.

on the basis that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush xxx. I have an old turkeys nest that looks like it will provide me with a truckload of already finished compost. it's even pH neutral! do you know what turkey's nest is like, Silver ... guys ...?

the turkey's nest stuff will have to be gypsum-ed tho because water beads and will not soak into it. I used it late last year and after gypsum it soon accepts water.

ok, bye for now.

 

[bonsai]

Yupppp, very familiar with brush turkey nests. All brown materials generally, fungas dominant. Add heaps of slow release nitrogen such as lucerne and give it plenty of bacteria-dominated compost tea to make it more cannabis friendly.

 

[luvaduck]

Which seedling are you talking about? All I see is the good stuff. Those more mature ones in the second shot look nice - branching, stem, internodes.... any idea what they are?

Started loading the compost tumbler for another go. Note to self - 20 kg of ripe plantain bananas is probably too much for one bin. Try maybe 10 kg this time. Too much fruit = wet slimy shit that takes forever to finish and dry out.

Anyone have any recipies for tumblers, or worm food recipies?

Thanks Bonsai, yeah I have been chucking a bit of shell dust in with the worms, and also with my potting and planting mixes. I have heard that high levels of calcium can help prevent fungal attacks.

Silver Surfer, that calcium phosphate seems to help things along a bit. Made up a batch when discussed in this forum. All gone now, but next time after roasting my shells i shall powder them in the coffee grinder in the expectation the shell will dissolve completely, and maybe use a slightly stronger acid. And please, next time you post a photograph of such a lovely creature, please do the brother a favour and photograph him NUTS DOWN!

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Hey wilbur no i have never seen a turkey nest but using one to grow marijuana sounds great! Any chance of a pic?

Gypsum: There are two kinds - mined gyspum and by-product gypsum. Make sure you are using the mined stuff. It tends to be the coarser of the two and can be quite lumpy. It may also be less soluble in water. By-product gypsum is produced either in the production of phosphate fertilisers or made from waste plasterboard. By-product gypsum will contain levels of fluoride and cadmium. Overtime these will accumulate and be drawn into the plants roots and eventully into our lungs/bodies... NOT GOOD!

Hey bonsai i got myself a nice 25kg bag of lucerne pellets for $28 at the Animal Tucker Box. Awesome! Usually they just have the chaff.

Hey luvaduck i use crushed grains (chook food) in my worm bin as well as clover hay, dolomite lime (sparingly) charcoal (also sparingly) and some fresh greens etc.

Glad you like the cal phos. I did think about a better photo of wally but he didnt fit in the hole very well right way up... next time

 

[wilbur]

lots of info today!

lots of info today!

Bonsai ... thanks for that. this nest is very old. looks like crumbly soil. will look further into its suitability for pots. I 'm wondering what you mean by "... fungus dominant"?
late last season I gypsum-ed some (proper gypsum, Silver) put a seedling in, peed in the pot and added molasses at teaspoon/litre and it grew a nice little plant in the time that was left.

Luvaduck ... the smallest seedling has its first leaves pointed to the sky and they are unusually large.
these are sativa, mate. from my own selections (usually from sex-altereds) of the same variety over the past fifteen years. they seem to me to be getting bigger AND more potent over the years

Silver, I 'll try to closeup photo the turkey nest soil, and show its soil/organic matter percentage by mixing in a jar of water, shaking and letting settle ... if I can photo that.

every year these birds start nests on my block and there are many old ones to source. I have a huge passionfruit growing in a trench I dug and refilled with turkeys nest. I always leave a fair bit of the nest behind so that the land is not stripped bare.

cheers all!

 

[Guest50138]

And please, next time you post a photograph of such a lovely creature, please do the brother a favour and photograph him NUTS DOWN!

Oh that's funny duck ,when I saw that poor bugger I thought of the TOU Rule 5
Obscene/Pornographic/Violent postings: Any use of images revealing genitalia , violence or violent atrocity(ies) will be removed and an infraction issued. Repeated posting of these types of images will result in banning.

you might have to put a fig leaf on his junk

 

[wilbur]

srub turkey nests

srub turkey nests

These nests are very hard to photo well because there are few contrasts in the bush. Everything is more or less the same colour.

The first shot is of a 'new' turkey's nest. I think it is about three years old. (Memory is frail.) Anyway the young have dug themselves out of the nest already (they never see their parents) so it must be more than a year old. This pile would be good for mulch but I 'll leave it to rot for a few years yet. Besides which, it is habitat for wintering snakes until it eventually turns to 'soil'.

The second shot is of the old turkey's nest I mentioned last post. It is huge. (also Guys, this is what it's like in the section of my block that contains old growth … will soon post some pics of my huge original trees. While I 'm lucky to have old growth forest, it only extends to a third of my block.)

The third shot shows the unprocessed material from the old nest. (It's on an old sheet if yr wondering wot the white is.) Most of the stuff you see disintegrates into 'soil' when rubbed thru a sieve.

The fourth shot shows the material sieved thru a kitchen strainer. Ready to pH test and add minerals and other good stuff, I 'd say.

The shot of the jar shows that 95% of the material is cellulose based with only a smidge of fine sand on the bottom. At first much of this material floated but when, after five minutes, the jar was shaken, the material had absorbed enuf water to sink to the bottom.


So waddayathink of that, Organic People? Now, are you gonna head for the state forest with a bag over yr shoulder to look for old turkey's nests, Silver? Should be heaps near where you are.

Cheers!

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Awesome wilbur that does look very nice when screened!

Should make an excellent base for your mary.

No bush turkeys down this way. We got native hens but they small.

 

[bonsai]

Bonsai ... thanks for that. this nest is very old. looks like crumbly soil. will look further into its suitability for pots. I 'm wondering what you mean by "... fungus dominant"?

i can see from your pics that the nest is fully composted/decomposed, so it's all good. Looks bloody marvelous actually. My point about fungal-dominance was assuming a new (eg: last season's) nest, where the material is largely intact.

As you well know, the scrub turkeys pile their nest using forest-floor leaf litter, which is predominately "brown", as per the brown vs. green differentiation we talk about in the context of composting. To drastically over-simplify for the sake of brevity, fungus will colonize intact brown matter faster than bacteria due to their increased size and “mobility”. Both will hitch rides on larger microbes and arthropods, but excluding that it's expected fungus will get there first. To further simplify, fungus and bacteria make nitrogen available in different forms. Annuals, such as cannabis, generally prefer the form provided by bacteria. Hence my suggestion to give the bacteria population and food source(s) a boost.

If you haven't already, it's definitely worth reading “Teaming with Microbes”, the first half is a good introductory text on the basis of the soil food web, the larger concept which I'm drastically over-simplifying in the above paragraph. The whole book is an engaging read.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Well put Bonsai.

You still rocking the camellia flower fps? I think im gonna make a batch up soon. Pretty sure its camellia in bloom the now. Thats if the possum leaves me any.

 

[wilbur]

THANKS BONSAI!

concise rave! I understand.

so I should put humates with this, Yes?

cheers!

 

[bonsai]

Well put Bonsai.

You still rocking the camellia flower fps? I think im gonna make a batch up soon. Pretty sure its camellia in bloom the now. Thats if the possum leaves me any.

Sure am mate, brewed about 40L of it this season plus added a piled barrow load to a new compost pile on Sunday. Made up 300ml bottles of camelia and dandelion FPE with lacto culture and gave them to friends and local permaculture group members. Positive reports coming back already.

We have many possums, but they don't touch the blossoms here. Did one FPE batch of only super dark red flowers, end product is a rich maroon liquid. Would love for it to encourage cannabis flowers to express their colours but I've got no science to back that up.

Obliterated a whitefly colony in veg cab with lavender and neem last week. Another victory for organics!

 

[bonsai]

THANKS BONSAI!

concise rave! I understand.

so I should put humates with this, Yes?

cheers!

You're welcome

I don't think you'll see much benefit adding humates, that's what the composted nest is full of. Maybe some lucerne for veg, or just a feed of fish emulsion now and then? Whatever you have on hand with some N. Its just another plant after all, and a bloody forgiving one at that

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Sure am mate, brewed about 40L of it this season plus added a piled barrow load to a new compost pile on Sunday. Made up 300ml bottles of camelia and dandelion FPE with lacto culture and gave them to friends and local permaculture group members. Positive reports coming back already.

We have many possums, but they don't touch the blossoms here. Did one FPE batch of only super dark red flowers, end product is a rich maroon liquid. Would love for it to encourage cannabis flowers to express their colours but I've got no science to back that up.

Obliterated a whitefly colony in veg cab with lavender and neem last week. Another victory for organics!

Sweet as bro. How many blooms per litre roughly? You use the blooms and green material in the compost heap?

Yeah i am pretty sure i have pink camelia that the possum nibbles. Not as much as last year but, they devoured the lot. I also have a bush covered in white blooms i am hoping are camellia too. I will post up a pic tmrw.

Awesome to use the power of organics! Did you combine the lavender and neem or make a seperate batch of each to spray?

Cheers mate

 

[Squiggles]

SilverSurfer_OG this thread is a credit to you and the ic community
been a good read time for another mojito

peace love and mungbeans
Squiggs...

 

[bonsai]

Flowers qty: Generally I just loosely fill up the bucket or barrel with whole flowers squash them down and fill it up with water and put a lid on. For chopped flowers, I'll half-fill the container and fill the rest with water. The compost heap addition was collected with a rake - fallen flowers and leaves from the carpet of colour the camellia create after they've flowered. For the FPEs I pick the flowers from the plants.

re: your plants, if the leaves grow from central points with the flower clusters in the centre of each leaf group, it's a rhododendron. If the leaves are dark green and thick growing in an alternating pattern off the stems, it's likely a camellia. The bush with white flowers is likely an azalea, as they are smaller plants where as the other two tend to be trees, especially camellia. Those three are similar plants that are all flowering now, though the camellia flower slightly earlier than the other two.

I've been told in the past by bee keepers not to eat honey from bees that feed on azalea, and for that reason have not made FPE from azalea. I wouldn't take it as gospel, but because I have such a glut of camellia flowers I don't see any point experimenting with the smaller azalea blooms.

re: whitefly cure, I id a light spray of neem, then two days later a heavy spray with lavender and a soil drench of remaining neem (mixed at foliar strength). Two days after that I did another lighter lavender spray and top-dressed with the chopped lavender flowers I'd used for the soak. The seven affected plants have bounced back nicely, but are still struggling with cold. (purple stems etc)



as an aside, am I the only one who is spun out by the fact we're on what is essentially a flower-growers forum? Bloody flowers?! My grandma would be proud!

 

[bonsai]

SilverSurfer_OG this thread is a credit to you and the ic community

Agreed. It's great to be able to discuss organics with people who have the same seasons and similar availability of supplies/amendments/etc.
Thanks SS_OG!

 

[High Country]

Don't over complicate it all everyone or it will end up like a hydro thread with Bud this...Bud that and 12,999 other additives.

They need water, a little bit of food....and lots of light and mild temps.

But keep it going....and don't plant out too early.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Thanks guys its a pleasure!

I will snap some pics in a mo. I reckon you are right about it being azalea.

I hear what you are saying High Country. But really these fpe's (fermented plant extracts) are simplicity itself.

Its as easy as collect flowers/herbs - chop up if you wish
Chuck into a bucket and fill to almost the brim with clean water.
Add a small amount of sugar (molasses) and EM1
Chuck on a lid and put into a warmish spot for a few days to a week.

Then strain and store or use diluted on the garden.

You get all the goodness from the plant in a readily available form other plants can absorb easily.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

The above were made last season.

The line-up (left to right) is an emulsion of neem oil, soap and aloe vera juice (mite killer/fungus gnat killer)
The extract of above flowers - flowering fert/tonic
Willow soak - cloning
Calcium phosphate - readily available calcium and phosphorous
Lavender soak - mite killer

The soaks are just flowers (lavender) or stems (willow) soaked for a few days in plain water.

Easy.

EDIT: Hmm just realised this is same info as on 1st page..... o well, its worth repeating again