The IC Organic Growers Community Thread.

[John Deere]

Lots of nice pix. I never understood this but...

You may not vote on any more threads today.

If you're worried about what to add between runs just go light. EWC is a given. Kelp is great. Maybe a little neem. Toss your leaf trimmings and such on top as mulch. No need to overdo it with additions, especially if the previous run went well.

Greensand isn't going to benefit you much if you don't recycle.

 

[Corpsey]

as far as things that i have used recently, i couldn't tell you which is responsible but im getting great growth and everything is the healthiest i have ever had.

thanks to others here in the last month i started using... fresh coconut water, sprout tea, ful-power, and tm-7, in conjunction with aloe, pro-tekt, fish hydrolysate which i have been using for a year or more. the living mulch is helping with moisture retension for sure.

Next is a worm bin and im set.

 

[self]

Great thread! I haven't looked i here at the organic forums in a while, glad i did.
I'm running recycled soil indoors and out, amended with guanos, kelp, greensand, chicken manure, blood meal, bone meal, mycorrhiza, crab shell, oyster shell, ewc. Outside lots of comfrey and nettle mulch and clover, lupine, pea, and bean living mulch. Got some big holes OD this year, shooting for 2+#ers. Last year i had three of the Sam the skunkman mixed freebies put out over a #, but I wasn't able to really flower them to perfection.
Check out my aquaponics in my sig, I love hanging out with my fish!

Self

 

[vonforne]

Here is some of my outdoor this year......first in a long time.

I have some more pictures. Can only post 5 at a time. I dig the holes rounger than a 5 gallon bucket and deeper. I shave the top layers of soil underneath the grass and mix it with 5 gallons of ROLS......the mix with the DE in it and mix it with the native soil. It is a bit clay based but mixes well and we have had lots of rain so far this year to set the plants good. I has been getting into the 90s here but the plants look good. Just received some rain today and it was a nice amount for the plants. I add alfalfa pellets ans Kelp meal to the holes and a little Neem seed meal with the soil and as a top dress. It has kept the critters back it seems which was my intention to see if it did.

 

[Babbabud]

Great vibe here .. great thread !!

 

[BugJar]

Damn thing sent without my permission..... Ill try again

So I was reading the lancaster ag quarterly pamphlet and Dr Paul Dettloff was talking about increasing mineral content in forage grasses and how to improve their protein content and healthy growth rates.
He recommends adding 5 things to foliar sprays


Sugar - Molasses, Diatastic malt

diastatic malt is not a sugar. it is a starch until you get it to about 135-150 for it to be converted into any kind of usable sugar

and frankly I think people are getting way swept away with the malt thing as it is malted at 120-125 degrees f all of the mesophelic enzymes have been denatured so putting it in water does nothing but maybe culture the lactob that happens to be left over from processing. I tired saying it before but apparently having years experience in the field means nothing to some people. real talk

but perhaps there is some X factor I am unaware of

 

[VerdantGreen]

@ stagger lee do you use the whole biobiz line or just a couple of their products?

i grow with a fully amended recycled soil with botanicals and rock dusts but i like to keep it fairly lean and supplement with a shot of fast release N guano which i know will run out after a few weeks. No teas, i mostly just add water but i also keep a bottle of biobiz bloom handy just in case i want to supplement a bit more. biobiz is pretty cheep an cheerful in the UK and works well for me.
my main cab is about 2x2ft and run 1ft square modular scrogs - 4 of them in the cab under a 250hps or more recently LED's of similar wattage.. 3-4 gallon pots.
whole cab canopy:

here are some individual ft square scrogs
sharksbreath

Cherry Bomb

Uk Cheese

Black Forrest - sometimes they get quite tall lol

VG

 

[VerdantGreen]

bugjar - tell us more about the malt... i thought the starches were converted to sugars during the malting process? i agree its good to be scheptical about the latest wonder fads...
and are you saying the enzymes are no longer intact?

 

[vapor]

schwing!

 

[ozzieAI]

loving this thread...good one VG

 

[vonforne]

I am prepping these hole for next year also. Here is a shot of my new and old mix together with lava rock and biochar and some DE mixed in there. I am pruning the plants when I swing through to bush them out and keep them low.

V

BTW I was also showing with the pictures of how I replace the grass ring around the base of the plant as not to leave a big ring around the plant. The grass and surrounding plants love the neem seed meal. lol

 

[BugJar]

bugjar - tell us more about the malt... i thought the starches were converted to sugars during the malting process? i agree its good to be scheptical about the latest wonder fads...
and are you saying the enzymes are no longer intact?

I'll break down the process as I have personally malted hundreds of pounds
we all understand that malted barley is the base for beer.

what malting is is sprouting the grains and then halting the sprouts once the chit is equal to the length of the grain. it is stopped by malting it. spreading it out on the floor and traditionally burning fire underneath. obviously they don't use fire these days but it is still malted slowly up until the 120f range depending on the lovibond of the finished product. obviously any enzymes that would be active in room temperature water have long since been denatured. speaking of denaturing there is also the issue of mechanical denaturing. that malt powder is very fine, can anyone tell me what happens when you turn a living organism into very fine dust? you guessed it. not living so much any more.

some sugars have been converted by the sprouting action but in reality it is very very little and most of it was in the cell walls of the sprout that isn't even there in the final product. however it makes sense to me that what is there regardless of how little it is should be very bio-available for any plant you might feed this water to. though I seriously question its solubility

so if you steep malt in 120 degree water you start to see proteolytic activity. where some of the thermophilic enzymes left start to activate and break down protein. still no real sugar.

when the temp climbs higher you start to see amylase enzymes actually get to work converting those complex starches into less complex sugars. but only when it is around 135-160f and the enzymes denature out of that range very very quickly

you can steep malt in tepid water all day and all it will do is get soggy it will never become beer and it will never be able to be fermented or really come alive in any way I am aware of other than being a starchy mess and giving the native lactic bacteria a place to hang out. btw even those are more effective and alive at higher temps

in baking the yeast reacts to the wide array of amino acids in the proteins and helps in baking but it is being acted upon by an outside force.

So as a catalyst in the soil there may be something to that claim but it is certainly is relying on your soil microflora and not internal enzymes and it would make more sense to me to top dress with it or something less time consuming

if seeking the benefits of the enzymes you best bet would be to sprout it yourself and then puree like some have suggested but even then you are going to suffer a lot of mechanical denaturing.

I have yet to hear one compelling argument for it that was based in any sort of fact.

I very heavily question any individuals research regarding anything related as somehow they missed obvious,huge, almost unavoidable and daunting amounts of information. regardless of who that person may be or how respected.

I type this with no negativity in my heart only pure love for all of you and our most beloved herb.

It is nothing personal but we all know science needs reviewed.

stoner science needs seriously reviewed.

so in short. it is a carb until converted into a sugar by amylase and no enzymesae active until it is around 120F. I am sure it makes for some nice microbe food in the end

 

[vStagger Leev]

@Verdant Green

For bloom I use the BioHeaven, TopMax, BioGrow, and BioBloom. i'll get my recipe on here if anyone is interested. I really dont follow much of the directions on the bottles, more or less use it as a standard. Last round I was dumping in almost 3tbls/gal of bloom during week 5-7, also dumping on the TopMax @ almost 1.5tbls/gal.

Veg is just hte FishMix and BioGrow, alternating or use half strength with both at the same time. Easiest bottled nutes, that are truly OG

Glad to see this thread already has a "sticky" on it! Much love, SL

 

[vStagger Leev]

Nuggets

Nuggets

 

[BugJar]

http://imgur.com/qhQ7nbw,txUtKY7#1

http://imgur.com/qhQ7nbw,txUtKY7#0

 

[VortexPower420]

Bugjar- I recant my malt statement as I thought differently. I have read before about malt being used as a sugar, I guess I should have researched it a little more and I will.

I personally am still using grains that I sprout, there is something zen about bring a jar of seeds to life and then spread it around.

Timbuktu

 

[Microbeman]

It is difficult to find any published information on this. I have doubted the veracity of using dried barley malt myself, except as a source of carbohydrates, which of course would feed soil bacteria/archaea & fungi.

The most success anecdotally (reported to me) seems to come from sprouting the grains a little longer in length than one would to create barley malt and then submerging these in water with aeration. If not aerated, I have been told it goes stanky.

I have been told that the production of glandular trichomes is greatly increased through the use of the resultant liquid on soil. The reason, if true, remains a mystery to me but I suspect it has something to do with either an increase in microbes from the liquid or as a result of the liquid providing a food source to microbes in the soil or a combination of the two. The other possibility is that the enzymes created are having a direct effect on plant growth. Just guessing.

 

[xmobotx]

i agree timbuktu ~for those sprout rinses; i like fresh

MM; i speculate in my conjecture that it has a lot to do w/ the sprouting enzymes and the foodstock theory you provided

 

[VortexPower420]

My thought was that the enzymes just allow things to go faster, both microlife and plant life, then you introduce co-enzymes from kelp/rock dusts/sea minerals and its like throwing gas on a fire.

That is how I picture it n my brain.

Timbuktu

 

[BugJar]

I am not totally discounting malt as being a good strata for microbial growth. in fact we rely on the fact that the amylase is there and does it's job, and then Saccharomyces can ferment it. every time we raise a bottle of liquor or beer made with barley.

Its enzymatic contribution to the soil web when steeped at room temperature is what I doubt and want to make sure that people don't have misconceptions about it being used as a sugar without proper extraction.

starch is pretty complex usually so I feel like it would be fairly difficult for any microbe to cleave it in any sort of helpful or orderly fashion.

all that said I am really on versed on the malt side. The organic matter contributed might make a happy home for all of our bug buddies in the soil and therefore *could* have great benefits.

Just so we can make sure we are all on the same page

malted barley = sprouted and then kilned to around 120f average

the reported beneficial enzymes are denatured in that range so steeping in room temperature is really not doing anything.

I do have a very very strong feeling that throwing malt flour into a composting batch of soil would have profound effects and provide a medium complex enough to keep our little buddies happier and healthier for the duration of the composting. I actually added a pound of un-milled malt barley to my most recent batch of soil to see if there were any noticeable results.

mushroom cultivators edible and otherwise have used malt barley to culture mycelium and it can be pretty rapid so we can only hope it has the same effect in out rootzone.

it should be noted that the results are better with unmilled grains then spent grain and much much better than flour.