Timing is huge! When to use all this organic stuff.

[BlueJayWay]

BioAg's TM-7 contains the correct level of Molybdenum (Mo) - chelated even plus the other 6 micronutrients in their Humic acid base. You know how well this product is priced.

And that's aptus big selling point, chelated - confuse the customer with some heavy duty science, say its chelated and 'immediately available' - bam a gabillion new customers!

A bag of TM7 will last a year or more....pennies on the dollar comparison and that's just taking Mo into consideration....


Comfrey is tough to get going at my elevation and maybe more so due to the granite rock I'm sure its roots are trying to break through.....one month and only 4" tall, they were planted in the fall before snow......while on the otherhand the house by the coast, 4" in a couple days, two months its feet tall with leaves 20" long. I can foresee 4 harvests a year there, fully grown each time, but just once in the mountains....next year once its fully established.....

 

[scai]

How about Potsil, potassium silicate? Sorry that I don't know how to copy with this tablet. Has anyone used that product?
have my computer now, and this was the product I wanted opinnions?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Potsil-Li...arden_PlantsSeedsBulbs_JN&hash=item231ce7ad21

 

[canna woop!]

how about it? that's what i hear. its the good stuff. one would split it into fewer parts than agsil had though i guess. Plants have a bit of the deficiency so i want to give them some now

 

[ClackamasCootz]

How about Potsil, potassium silicate? Has anyone used that product?

scai

Compared to Dyna-Gro Pro-TeKt (also Potassium Silicate), this product is about 3x more concentrated. I looked at their recommended dosage page where they suggest 2 mls to 10 liters water which is an uber safe application rate, IMHO

So compare pricing on both and go from there.

HTH

CC

 

[ClackamasCootz]

Blue Jay Way

When its shown to be necessary by a 'real world' soil test, a typical application rate for Molybdenum is 6 - 12 ounces per acre.

Chelation is achieved in several ways - that's really the key but I'll bet those scientists at Aptus really have this figured out, right?

CC

 

[VerdantGreen]

whole grains including barley are good sources of molybdenum so you probably have it covered with your seed sprout teas and slurry

 

[scai]

scai

Compared to Dyna-Gro Pro-TeKt (also Potassium Silicate), this product is about 3x more concentrated. I looked at their recommended dosage page where they suggest 2 mls to 10 liters water which is an uber safe application rate, IMHO

So compare pricing on both and go from there.

HTH

CC

Thanks for opinnion CC, the safe side is good for me.
That was the one available for me ( I live in nomans land, far from everything, and post is my friend )
Fairly new to me to use, so it's good to see if it has effects and what kind, before making solution any stronger .
I believe it was recommendation in this site, for me to go looking for it (potassium silicate).
There is norhing I wouldn't do for healthy plants...

 

[bajangreen]

Maybe i took this timing thing to far. i put molasses into a ACT brew at 30 hours, i think i killed it. plants dont look like they should.

 

[canna woop!]

i gave up brewing compost tea about a year ago. Since then, it's been straight shit chuckin and VC topdressin in the garden... also adding redworms to the pots individually when the opportunity arises. by shit chuckin i mean mixing the raw manure with leafy greens to produce compost/VC, only takes a week or two to break down w/ this weather

 

[ClackamasCootz]

scai

The author of Teaming With Microbes has written a new book titled Teaming With Nutrients and in the Introduction he (Jeff Lowenfels) discusses the history of Justus Von Liebig's work in the 1840's that gave birth to the NPK mythology. 168 years isn't a bad run.

Here's an interesting cite since it mentions Silicate of Potash (Potassium Silicate):

Page 12 - 13

Von Liebig experimented in a field in the English countryside from 1845 to 1849, growing crops using artificial manures, the first synthetic fertilizers. He made one mistake, however. Von Liebig thought plants got their Nitrogen from the atmosphere, so he didn’t add it to his soils. His plants didn’t do well. Quickly proven wrong on where Nitrogen came from, he and others prepared inorganic fertilizer formulations that contained Nitrogen and worked well. In fact, they worked as well as manures. After only a few years of testing, the results were so impressive that they caused Liebig to predict, “A time will come, when fields will be manured with a solution of glass (Silicate of Potash), with the ashes of burnt straw, and with the salts of phosphoric acid, prepared in chemical manufactories, exactly as at present medicines are given for fever and goitre”

I thought that was interesting - that's all...

CC

 

[Microbeman]

I believe certainly some plants will take up too many nutrients for their own good (or our own good as we are the ones who are smoking them). and others will be reluctant to yellow out nicely for a smooth smoke at the end unless the nutrients in the soil are depleted.

Just planted in a bed which is 8' x 24' x 33" deep. The soil mix is made to be good for 20 years. How would I ever conceive that the nutrients will be depleted at the end of a 2 or 3 month season?

 

[Microbeman]

Alfalfa isnt so much used over in the UK which is odd. comfrey is quite popular

i usually give my plants a topdress of a handful or two of EWC after the stretch has finished - they often yellow a little bit by this time. this gives just a trickle of N over the rest of flowering but not too much. plus all the other goodness that it has.

i added some ground up comfrey pellets to my rols on the last recycle and this seems to work nicely. added more this time round and less rock guano (high P) as i feel the rock guano is also a liming agent.. as is rock Phosphate. i dont think keep adding that every cycle is going to help.

Hey vg; What is rock guano? Do rocks poo?

 

[scai]

scai

The author of Teaming With Microbes has written a new book titled Teaming With Nutrients and in the Introduction he (Jeff Lowenfels) discusses the history of Justus Von Liebig's work in the 1840's that gave birth to the NPK mythology. 168 years isn't a bad run.

Here's an interesting cite since it mentions Silicate of Potash (Potassium Silicate):



I thought that was interesting - that's all...

CC

Once again someone who could predict
Watched yesterday a document of trees and funghi symbiosis.
Lady who made these arguments said that she went to see Avatar and when she saw the big mother tree that gave life to whole community and ecosystem.
And she sat there and thought "Wau, they have read my papers!" .

She was talking about forrest as one big symbiosis .Big trees transferring useful indegredients to small ones and all the funghi around, cos they couldn't survive without light as big trees do.Like a family thing she said.

Need to try to get that book..As well as the first one.

 

[VerdantGreen]

Just planted in a bed which is 8' x 24' x 33" deep. The soil mix is made to be good for 20 years. How would I ever conceive that the nutrients will be depleted at the end of a 2 or 3 month season?

Hi Mm, you have edited that sentence (that you quoted) out of a longer post and taken it out of context. as i pointed out in the complete post, this is more the case when smaller pots and stronger ferts are used.
basically if i am going to pull 3-4 ounces from a 3-4 gallon pot then the soil that i start with is going to be quite rich, with faster release ferts like guanos etc. the N levels that the plant enjoys during stretch/early flower would be detrimental to the bud quality of the plant if they persisted at the same levels till the end of flower.
Using a bed like you described and no-till, then you have a much bigger volume of soil for the plant to root into and thus you dont need such concentrations of Nutrition - but the rate at which the nutrients in the bed becomes available is still relevant, and so the mix of soil/concentration of amendments you use is still important.
as i mentioned in another part of the post that you didnt quote... a soil that is ok for your general indicas and hybrids is likely too rich for tropical sativas (as i believe you found out with some of your transplants).

VG

ETA, when you say 'good for 20 years' i think you are speaking hyperbolically, because i strongly suspect that you will be topdressing with various nutrition during that period ?

 

[VerdantGreen]

Hey vg; What is rock guano? Do rocks poo?

lol, not as far as i'm aware Mm.

rock guano is fossilized guano deposits, im pretty sure it is virtually the same thing as rock phosphate. High in P but also a liming agent.

VG

 

[Microbeman]

Hi Mm, you have edited that sentence (that you quoted) out of a longer post and taken it out of context. as i pointed out in the complete post, this is more the case when smaller pots and stronger ferts are used.
basically if i am going to pull 3-4 ounces from a 3-4 gallon pot then the soil that i start with is going to be quite rich, with faster release ferts like guanos etc. the N levels that the plant enjoys during stretch/early flower would be detrimental to the bud quality of the plant if they persisted at the same levels till the end of flower.
Using a bed like you described and no-till, then you have a much bigger volume of soil for the plant to root into and thus you dont need such concentrations of Nutrition - but the rate at which the nutrients in the bed becomes available is still relevant, and so the mix of soil/concentration of amendments you use is still important.
as i mentioned in another part of the post that you didnt quote... a soil that is ok for your general indicas and hybrids is likely too rich for tropical sativas (as i believe you found out with some of your transplants).

VG

ETA, when you say 'good for 20 years' i think you are speaking hyperbolically, because i strongly suspect that you will be topdressing with various nutrition during that period ?

I was actually referring to myself and not to your techs really. One could never argue that your methods work well for what you do. The quote was only for reference but next time I'll leave the whole thing in. I just wanted to make the point that there would be no way, even if I wanted to, to arrange a depletion of nutrients for my plants unless I decided upon wholesale brutality.

Well, I'm looking at growing many races/cultivars and have done so in similar soils. This is soil designed to become alive, not to be loaded with a certain portion of plant goodies. I will likely use ACT ongoing for a duration and fish hydrolysate once in a while. I will topdress between seasons with my own vermicompost and compost only. I'm still debating potassium silicate. However, I really mean 20 years...maybe more but that will be up to someone else. Living soil really is living, not just lip service. I'm not saying I can't fail. That is possible. My last record was 7 years in much smaller bins but the end was manmade.

It was a transplant into small squares which caused the burning I encountered which you referenced. It did effect a Central American cultivar more than the others but it had nothing to do with rich soil. It was my fault for breaking up some balls of rock dust and mixing them into the small amount of soil, when I should have chucked them. As it turns out, which you will see at some point. my own cultivar has a much more pronounced (tropical) sativa phenotype than the Central Americans that were supposed to and they actually withstood the burning much better. This is my first time experimenting with a heavy rock dust mix - 3% + 15% pea gravel.

 

[VerdantGreen]

hey Mm. understood. i think we are at opposite ends of the soil volume scale. Your beds are probably comparable to open ground whereas i expect a whole lot from a relatively small volume of soil. My soil is also designed to be alive too, but as well as the milder amendments such as compost and rock dusts/meals, i also add a dose of fast release N guano which will help support the plant through the stretch and flower setting period. this is the element of nutrition that i want to become largely depleted sometime during mid flower. To give you an idea of how strong the soil is, i had to reduce it to quarter strength in order to avoid leaf clawing (a sign of too much N) when i grew original haze in the soil. (half strength was still too strong and caused clawing of the upper leaves.)

As for your beds, i will be very impressed if your soil is versatile enough to keep the pure sativas happy as well as your general hybrids, although i'm sure the virtually unlimited root space will help. i can understand why you would have thought that rock dust would be unlikely to cause a problem but i guess 'rock dust' is a very broad term and some may have minerals that are more soluble than others.
it doesnt surprise me (if i understand you corectly) that the pure sativa suffered more burning than a sativa pheno of a hybrid line - because even though its a sativa pheno i would have thought the hybrid genetics would still help it to deal with a richer soil.

i've been debating whether i should get some kind of silica fert myself, having never used one or felt i needed to... but recently i started using comfrey meal (as in crushed dried comfrey leaves) and coot pointed out that comfrey has a healthy silica content. i also suspect that topsoil with its mineral soil content would contribute too.

VG

 

[Microbeman]

I would never even come close to considering mixing manures into my soil, no matter the volume. I've experienced the shitty end of this activity when growing many things from tomatoes to flowers.

To me this is counter-intuitive of what a living soil is and how it functions with microbial heirarchically arranged zones [terra preta and one straw style].

It is not that I underestimated the potential for the nutrient capacity of the rock dust, it is that I spaced out and unwittingly increased the ratio of the RD by at least 10. This is not fancy rock dust like everybody buys but stuff I found myself for free and had lab tested.

I guess my idea of living soil is more literal and primal than most growers.

As for my 'pure' sativas, I'll be surprised if that is indeed what they really are but time will tell.

 

[VerdantGreen]

why no manures Mm? ive always found that, used with caution, they work very well both with weed and most other plants/crops that require fairly heavy feeding.

or is it that you just wouldn't mix them in?

are the sativas the geurerra? (sp?)

VG

 

[Microbeman]

Yes that is all. Not mixed in. Topdressed yes.