The growing large plants, outdoors, thread...

[planty]

soil life in the pot on the left looks spot on...C:N ratio in the one on the right is probably off...look at the difference in what looks to be clover popping up...DO you have an ERGS meter? That would be a good place to start...

 

[localhero]

DO NOT PUT MOLASSES IN THE TEA BREWER UNLESS YOU WANT PRETTY MUCH BACTERIA ONLY...MOLASSES MAKES BACTERIA IN THE TEA GO BANANAS

oops, youre right! old habits i swear. should have stated that Planty does not use molasses for fungal brews. I'm planning on starting a fungal tea today. i dont have baby oats, but i do have irish steel cut oats. man i didnt even think about molasses causing the bacteria to outcompete the fungi.

Stoked to see how a fungal tea goes.

no meters yet. no microscope will a binocular 1000x scope be enough to view my teas under? i found one like that online, just havent gotten a response yet.

 

[nomaad]

What magnification is needed for microlife? I was given a shitty usb microscope with up to 900x... only works with slides, though.... unless I trick it out with a direct lighting source. I know how to make a slide out of a microbial tea... but how do you look at soil microlife on a slide?

 

[planty]

Take a root sample

The $300 scope from www.microbeorganics.com works really well ...the $600 works twice as good...

 

[nomaad]

no scope shipping till July. boo.

 

[BotanicalBill]

So I went out there to put the last girls in and check on that freaky one my buddy mentioned, and lo and behold every one of them looked stunning after being in the ground a week with the exception of 1. The one however wasn't the leaf curling issue, I couldn't find any of them describing what my buddy mentioned. One of them however is trying really hard to flower which is kind of annoying but there's not a ton I can do about it so I'll just let it grow out of it, take the hit on yield, and make sure that one doesn't get used next year. I was in a hugerush because of some unexpected circumstances so I didn't get pictures, but I did get to start tying the branches down to the cattle panel(welded 2"x4" wire) and it was amazingly easy to do. It's pretty cool to walk up to plants that are 4+ feet long, sticking a foot off the ground, and in 5 minutes having them all laying completely flat again and trained in any direction I want..

In a week a lot of the plants went from laying completely horizontal to reaching way up to soak in the rays so I couldn't be more pleased. Apparently they are loving Tom's recipe right out of the gate. I'll be back out Thursday to complete the tying down, rig a bigger water pump and make some modifications to the irrigation system so I'll definitely have pics to show then as I have all day to mess around out there.

Planty, I was thinking low humidity was the issue too as it was somewhat low for this part of the area over the weekend.. Today was extremely humid and cloudy, so the combination of that combined with the fact that my buddy did water all the foliage last night must have solved the problem because I looked at every single one of them and they all looked great. I am a huge fan of Kelp and have a nice professional sprayer I can use to douse them all when the time comes.. I just used up the last gallon of Kelpak a few weeks ago unfortunately.. Need to load order that back up..

Anyway, back in a few days with some pics.

BB

 

[nomaad]

Butte's right... can't find shit in this thread. What is the sprayer Tom recommends?

 

[planty]

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200347991_200347991

 

[planty]

https://www.icmag.com/ic/search.php?searchthreadid=159846

Use that link to search this thread...use quotes and use the username of the person who you want to find posts by..I have good luck doing that...

 

[nomaad]

So I am about to get this sprayer, recommended by Señor Hill:

Seems its built to be mounted off the back of an ATV which gives it power... let's say I am just going to be wheeling it around on a cart... Has anybody built a rig like this? Should I just run it off a car battery that sits charging all the time when not in use? Inverter for when I am close to power and battery power in the remote garden? I guess I could run power out to the "remote" garden and only hook it up to an inverter...

Any thoughts?

 

[humboldtlocal]

I just got two of the same. Also the spray gun that Tom recommends and the agitation kit. Tom said you can put it all in a garden cart if no atv. I think battery charging when not in use would be fine. We have yet to run ours but hopefully in the next few days we can take em for a test drive. This is the gun Tom recommends and I just realized they sent me the wrong ones.
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200311938_200311938

 

[nomaad]

So I went out there to put the last girls in and check on that freaky one my buddy mentioned, and lo and behold every one of them looked stunning after being in the ground a week

Nice one, bro. Glad to hear everything (well, almost) is looking good. Can't wait to see your pics.

 

[BotanicalBill]

nomaad, here's the one we'll use, not nearly as much capacity per-fill but there's much less to cover in our case..

http://www.hummert.com/ProductImages/06-5050.jpg

It is smaller, however, in case something more portable is more desirable to you.. the same battery/inverter-in-a-cooler-with-wheels that is used for the water pump will be just carted up and down the field to power it... Somewhat convenient, anyway.
It's called an Atomist. I believe the reservoir holds roughly 1 gallon.

BB

 

[Guest423]

A deep cell marine battery would run that sprayer for a long time between charges.

What happened to Planty? Hope everything is OK.

 

[nomaad]

He's fine. Just got bored with us. Too bad as we just started to get along. The deep cell marine batteries are what I was looking at, but I have this auto battery, brand new, just sitting there... feel like it would be wasteful. I am going to need two of these rigs.. I wonder if I could build and inexpensive solar charger for it.

 

[el Dream Reader]

Harbour freight has some inexpensive solar chargers in various styles and sizes. They have just the trickle type and they have controllers as well.

 

[Tom Hill]

Just a quick check-in folks. Still recovering from the fair HL, lol.

Summer is here, soil is warming, plants are greening-up now. I see brother Nomaad is plugged and looking good.

Vroom vroom...

I got one of the blackboxes ready to yank kivvers today.

Here is the terrace garden in a couple of shots, still looking for a decent place to capture a better image in one shot. 44 plants, 16ft on center, 8x8x1+ft holes mostly w/a few containers too. All from scratch this year. Good sun, it'll blow-up toute suite. Far left of this first pic is an area I call Butte's Bowl (11) in honor of our friend Butte and the plants I plugged-in there

Got the last garden plugged a few days ago, pics soon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0yMziB_2BA

 

[el Dream Reader]

WOW, Mr Hill your truly a master at work. Much respect.

 

[resin_lung]

Loving the terrace Tom. You NorCal guys sure know how to knock it out the park! Much respect!

 

[nomaad]

Beautiful Gardens, Tom. I am assuming by "yank kivvers" you mean pull tarp. When will you be starting to pull? Going to use any ventilation/air exchange later in the season when humidity becomes an issue?

Had a good ol time at the fair, did ya?