Ok, so... I'm fully on board with the organic indoor revolution nowadays. I started my growing career with organics, but back then most of the cannabis world had no idea what made organics work indoors... something about Earth Juice and uneven weight/quality results, but that was about it. I've tried many organic variants over the years, from full crops done with nothing more than coco coir top-fed with a single 12-12-10 guano and nothing more (hit or miss results there for sure, but surprisingly effective). Without doing microbe teas, at the time, however, this method was very unpredictable. I've done straight up bottled organic nutes with and without pHing, I've done organic soils where you attempt to get the full cycle done without feeding the soil, etc, etc, etc.
Then... Rezdog showed me what he was doing with Gen Hydro Flora (Lucas formula). At that time I was fully frustrated with the wishy washy, uneven results and often harsh smoke the "organics" were producing, so I switched over the GH. Also at that time, we had moved to Maine and were locked into a need to produce dependably, no room for fucking around. So, the GH fit the bill perfectly for that purpose. I knew GH bud had a tendency to smell like weed mixed with hot, linty laundry, but I was determined to get those smells back in line somehow. I never did achieve that. So, I moved from one "dependable" synthetic nutrient in a bottle to the next, looking for ease of use, yields, and high quality herb. Believe it or not, I eventually settled on FoxFarm nutes. FoxFarm was easily available at my local farm supply store, could sit in my reservoir without a bubbler for many days without getting slimy or stinky, did a great job at delivering most of what the plants needed, and COULD produce decent bud. However, like so many other synths, it was hard to truly flush from the system.
So what we have in this thread is an interesting little study, an opportunity to see and learn about (if you've not undergone any such switch over yourselves) what it takes to switch over to fully organic, but without skipping a beat where production is concerned. I'm not in a position to switch over all of a sudden, I gotta go gradual on this switch.
Here's what's going on in this room right now... Firstly, excuse the shape of the room, it is in the middle of being expanded, the room is under construction.
These plants are the very first to step into the world of pure organics, however, since the medium is NOT soil, but straight up ProMix, we can't call this the final step. These ladies were vegged with FoxFarm nutes, mostly synths, but were switched to TONS of Earth Juice (with 24 hr bubbling) and microbe teas EVERY watering until recently. I knew that the veritable DESERT of life in the dead medium (not true soil) needed to be crammed with microbe infusions to bring some sort of living structure to it. Most of the Earth Juice particulate simply settled onto the surface of the soil and wasn't getting into the medium, which caused a thick mat of roots to form there. This thick mat severely slowed the ability for water to get into the soil. You have to fill it to the rim and wait a few minutes before you can give it another fill to the rim. SLOW. But I expected this during the switch, and it's working as well as can be expected.
At this point I am not feeding any more Earth Juice, just molasses to keep the microbe herd kicking happily and eating up the rest of the Earth Juice laying on the surface of the medium. They should be able to finish up and go nice and evenly yellow by harvest.
By the way... the ultimate plan here is to be 100% organic. The next crop will be in a rich soil, a soil built with re-use in mind. I'm amending the next batch of soil quite heavily with rice hulls and volcanic rock, eliminating any perlite in the future. Also, NO BOTTLED NUTES EVER AGAIN! What a scam bottled nutes are. I never really thought about the facts involved until I watched a video by John Kohler of Growing Your Greens channel on YouTube. His buddy was a guest on the video, the guest was the guy who started and runs the Boogie Brew company. This dude went off on a really impassioned rant about how most of what you're spending money on with bottled nutes is...... WATER. And the amount of waste plastic and damage to the earth just by having to ship this damn water all around was ludicrous. If you look at a bottle of liquid nutes, what you're holding is a few cents worth of actual dry nutrient, water, and a hell of a heavy and expensive thing to have to ship. Take the bottle and the water out of the picture and what do you have??? Yep, a tiny bit of dry material that can be bought in massive amounts that could last you years and cost you a tiny, tiny fraction of what it costs in a bottle. I can add my own damn water! hehehe So, that's a major new point of consciousness I'm owning these days. The days of bottled nutes are coming to a close for me.
Basically, the plan for my organic setup is this: good, recyclable and re-amendable soil, lots of microbe teas, top feeding from time to time, nitrogen-fixing cover crops, that's pretty much it. Now if I can only download everything about the soil food web out of MicrobeMan's head all at once! That would be sweet. I'll have to do it the old fashioned way, read and learn.
As you might see in these pictures... the plants are looking pretty happy right now. I could hardly ask for more from these relatively small pots (maybe 3 or 4 gallon pots). The plant to pot size ration is quite nice. This is pretty much right on par with what I get with all my other methods, synth or hybrid synth/organic. Ultimately, success in the size department is determined by how much you know, how in love you are with being a grower nerd, and how dedicated you are to just staring at the plants and getting messages from them telling you what they want, then executing their orders. However, I'm looking for the best of the best of the best indoor cannabis possible. In this market your herbs have to stand out. People need to smoke your herb and then not be able to get it out of their heads all day, until they can satiate the urge to smoke more and more of it, and ignore the other weeds out there. That's the only way to stay competitive in the current bonanza. Your goat needs to be golden, so it stands out in a sea of white goats.
So, after these girls come out, the room will be filled with true organics. Stay gooned for more...
The first set of pics are the Chemdog D. If you're wondering if it's the real Chem D, why yes it is! Chemdog himself handed it me on a rooftop in Manhattan years ago. Hard to get better provenance than that, eh? hehehe
Then... Rezdog showed me what he was doing with Gen Hydro Flora (Lucas formula). At that time I was fully frustrated with the wishy washy, uneven results and often harsh smoke the "organics" were producing, so I switched over the GH. Also at that time, we had moved to Maine and were locked into a need to produce dependably, no room for fucking around. So, the GH fit the bill perfectly for that purpose. I knew GH bud had a tendency to smell like weed mixed with hot, linty laundry, but I was determined to get those smells back in line somehow. I never did achieve that. So, I moved from one "dependable" synthetic nutrient in a bottle to the next, looking for ease of use, yields, and high quality herb. Believe it or not, I eventually settled on FoxFarm nutes. FoxFarm was easily available at my local farm supply store, could sit in my reservoir without a bubbler for many days without getting slimy or stinky, did a great job at delivering most of what the plants needed, and COULD produce decent bud. However, like so many other synths, it was hard to truly flush from the system.
So what we have in this thread is an interesting little study, an opportunity to see and learn about (if you've not undergone any such switch over yourselves) what it takes to switch over to fully organic, but without skipping a beat where production is concerned. I'm not in a position to switch over all of a sudden, I gotta go gradual on this switch.
Here's what's going on in this room right now... Firstly, excuse the shape of the room, it is in the middle of being expanded, the room is under construction.
These plants are the very first to step into the world of pure organics, however, since the medium is NOT soil, but straight up ProMix, we can't call this the final step. These ladies were vegged with FoxFarm nutes, mostly synths, but were switched to TONS of Earth Juice (with 24 hr bubbling) and microbe teas EVERY watering until recently. I knew that the veritable DESERT of life in the dead medium (not true soil) needed to be crammed with microbe infusions to bring some sort of living structure to it. Most of the Earth Juice particulate simply settled onto the surface of the soil and wasn't getting into the medium, which caused a thick mat of roots to form there. This thick mat severely slowed the ability for water to get into the soil. You have to fill it to the rim and wait a few minutes before you can give it another fill to the rim. SLOW. But I expected this during the switch, and it's working as well as can be expected.
At this point I am not feeding any more Earth Juice, just molasses to keep the microbe herd kicking happily and eating up the rest of the Earth Juice laying on the surface of the medium. They should be able to finish up and go nice and evenly yellow by harvest.
By the way... the ultimate plan here is to be 100% organic. The next crop will be in a rich soil, a soil built with re-use in mind. I'm amending the next batch of soil quite heavily with rice hulls and volcanic rock, eliminating any perlite in the future. Also, NO BOTTLED NUTES EVER AGAIN! What a scam bottled nutes are. I never really thought about the facts involved until I watched a video by John Kohler of Growing Your Greens channel on YouTube. His buddy was a guest on the video, the guest was the guy who started and runs the Boogie Brew company. This dude went off on a really impassioned rant about how most of what you're spending money on with bottled nutes is...... WATER. And the amount of waste plastic and damage to the earth just by having to ship this damn water all around was ludicrous. If you look at a bottle of liquid nutes, what you're holding is a few cents worth of actual dry nutrient, water, and a hell of a heavy and expensive thing to have to ship. Take the bottle and the water out of the picture and what do you have??? Yep, a tiny bit of dry material that can be bought in massive amounts that could last you years and cost you a tiny, tiny fraction of what it costs in a bottle. I can add my own damn water! hehehe So, that's a major new point of consciousness I'm owning these days. The days of bottled nutes are coming to a close for me.
Basically, the plan for my organic setup is this: good, recyclable and re-amendable soil, lots of microbe teas, top feeding from time to time, nitrogen-fixing cover crops, that's pretty much it. Now if I can only download everything about the soil food web out of MicrobeMan's head all at once! That would be sweet.
I'll have to do it the old fashioned way, read and learn.As you might see in these pictures... the plants are looking pretty happy right now. I could hardly ask for more from these relatively small pots (maybe 3 or 4 gallon pots). The plant to pot size ration is quite nice. This is pretty much right on par with what I get with all my other methods, synth or hybrid synth/organic. Ultimately, success in the size department is determined by how much you know, how in love you are with being a grower nerd, and how dedicated you are to just staring at the plants and getting messages from them telling you what they want, then executing their orders. However, I'm looking for the best of the best of the best indoor cannabis possible. In this market your herbs have to stand out. People need to smoke your herb and then not be able to get it out of their heads all day, until they can satiate the urge to smoke more and more of it, and ignore the other weeds out there. That's the only way to stay competitive in the current bonanza. Your goat needs to be golden, so it stands out in a sea of white goats.
So, after these girls come out, the room will be filled with true organics. Stay gooned for more...
The first set of pics are the Chemdog D. If you're wondering if it's the real Chem D, why yes it is! Chemdog himself handed it me on a rooftop in Manhattan years ago. Hard to get better provenance than that, eh? hehehe
