The Organic Think Tank

[Danks2005]

Mullray, they use ammonia, ammonia is produced using the Haber-Bosch process using fossil fuels.

They also use phosphate, which is strip mined, destroying huge ecosystems.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

The haber process has only to do with putting N and H together. The source of the H is irrelevant to the process, but is mostly natural gas, which is the source for almost all of the H used for anything anywhere.

Where do your plants get their Phosphorous?

 

[redneck shogun]

Organics may seem pointless and complicated to some but life is complicated if you look close enough. It was intuition and the search for true knowledge that brought me to organics and it changed my life forever.

 

[Danks2005]

All i use is compost as a topdressing and/or tea, I make the compost in my backyard and the plants are healthy as ever. I understand that these processes are used for more than fertilizer, and I'm not gonna stop em by composting, I personally just dont need to add to it just to pull a few extra grams out of a weed.

 

[toohighmf]

mullray & GratefulH3ad FTW!!!

I do agree that RNDZL has a few valid points, however. I build pretty CEA rooms that are Air cooled, Dehumidified, Air conditioned, possibly water chilled res. Co2 is monitored and controlled. pumps to eventually fail are automated by a pair of chinese rheostats in a box (cycle timer to also fail some day) to my vert NFT system with 1/4" lines & multiple drip manifolds to leak or clog. Disease/infestation is rare, but there is always the burdensome prevention methods associated.

On the other hand, if I was growing organically, my environment would be pretty much identical. I don't really care if organics are more resistant to pathogens and bugs, because I try not to have any. I can honestly say my last grow did not breed a single fungus gnat, or any other pest. the only defics it had was starting 8 days into my flush.

I believe organics have much bigger role outdoors more than in. I build some pretty trick Drip & NFT systems for next to nothing compared to what a pre fab system goes for, and I can build & plumb/troubleshoot a complete modular 8x16' system in under 4 hours for about $400 all in. 4x4x2.5" rockwool cubes come 188 per case I pay $130 for. ferts can be as low as $50 for the whole crop. the only problem is that they don't do to well outdoors.. again, thats what organics are for! I use some molasses, and some vermicrop tea without incident. seems to keep the salt content down, and molasses makes a great flushing agent! thats about the extent of organics I use, but certainly do not need.

There is one other aspect to this style of growing for me. the complexity of hydroponics keeps the hobby alive in me. hell, lets all admit that growing weed is stressful. the legalities in particular when growing for more than personal. Designing & building these systems & making them work is truly the fun part for me. As some peoples hobbies are building things, the DIYer in me wants to constantly build a better mouse trap. I like to tinker. it keeps my wig tight. the design, build, troubleshooting, and completion feels good. takes some of the stress out for me.

Investing 2 hours a week monitoring my res & cleaning my lines/pumps is pretty a pretty small workload. keeping the bills paid, my op running pig and drama free is more than enough stress for me to deal with. Even though it's kinda the fun in it too... Partial thread drift..but while RNDZL has been looking into the minds of some of the above posters, I wanted to add the reasons why we do the the things we do, or perhaps think the way we individually think. I'm nuts so don't even bother trying to analyze my bipolar ass!

 

[Danks2005]

toohightmf, being a diy guy, i can completely understand that side of hydro, I been doing the organic thing for about 2 years, the 7-8 years before that were hydro, and I never bought a prepackaged hydro setup, ever, I like to tinker also.

 

[poison Ivy]

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=173094


It's more than just killing the crops, I feel it's to dumb down the opposition up there cuz folks up north don't comply at all to the bullshit we are told. The government wants that land and I'd be willing to bet Phillip Morris is behind this in a BIG way!

 

[Guest 88950]

while looking up info on thalassa mix i found this site with it and their line of organic hydro nutes but im too new to be able to size them up but heres their link for anyone interested.

btw, they seem to be inexpensive.

Great Lakes Garden Supply
http://tiptopwebsite.com/websites/index2.php?username=tommyrow203&page=3

[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]

 

[Lazyman]

Yeah their website is very entertaining,

All of these ingredients come from nature and have not been synthesized or chemically altered, only energetically enhanced. Composts and herbal preparations are made according to Rudolph Steiner’s original discourses and enhanced through the wisdom of Schauberger. Pure sea water and The Original Himalayan Crystal Salt are blended together in a patented mixing device to form a super-saturate, which is seven times more concentrated than sea water.

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner[1] (25 or 27 February 1861[2] – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social thinker, architect and esotericist.[3][4] He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he founded a new spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy growing out of European transcendentalism and with links to Theosophy.

Steiner led this movement through several phases. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and mysticism; his philosophical work of these years, which he termed spiritual science, sought to provide a connection between the cognitive path of Western philosophy and the inner and spiritual needs of the human being. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he

began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, eurythmy) and architecture, culminating in the building of a cultural center to house all the arts, the Goetheanum.

After the First World War, Steiner worked with educators, farmers, doctors, and other professionals to develop Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine as well as new directions in numerous other areas.[5]

Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual component. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which “Thinking … is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.”[6] A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.[7]

Viktor Schauberger (30 June 1885 – 25 September 1958) was an Austrian forester/forest warden, naturalist, philosopher, inventor and Biomimicry experimenter.
The inventor of what he called "implosion technology", Schauberger developed his own theories based on fluidic vortices and movement in nature. He built actuators for airplanes, ships, silent turbines [1], self-cleaning pipes and equipment for cleaning and so-called "refinement" of water to create spring water, [2] which he used as a remedy.

Schauberger's theories appear not to have received acceptance in the mainstream western scientific community, as replication proves either too difficult or results vary from previously published data.

This is exactly the type of pseudo-hippy snake oil bullshit they use to try and sell you their own brand of bullshit. These are the people that should teach yoga classes, not that I rely on for precision scientific work like microbiology and chemistry.

Great Lakes Garden supply, bullshit from bullshitters, not surprising in the least.

 

[Guest 88950]

thx Lazy, im trying not to be caught up in that so ill get my knowledge from here.

should i delete the post to keep thread clean?

 

[mullray]

Mullray, they use ammonia, ammonia is produced using the Haber-Bosch process using fossil fuels.

They also use phosphate, which is strip mined, destroying huge ecosystems.

Sort of cracks me up. They're raping our seas for fish which is turned into fertilizers but you speak of strip mining rocks . Ripping kelps from oceans which by the way are natural cleansers and collect heavy metals among other things from polluted oceans. Love the way that vegans and vegetarians swear by organics but fail to acknowledge that their veg is grown (often) using blood and blone manures, thus animals are murdered to feed even vegans and vegetarians Hey if you're into saving the planet stop eating meat (like I did many years ago). The release of methane from animals is a major environmental pollutant. If we all stop eating meat there will no need for billions of sheep and cattle and we can make a significant impact here alone. Anyone for a steak??

Couple more examples, speaking of the ocean.

BIO-FISH 7-7-2


Arsenic <0.5000
Cadmium 7.9000 (Through the roof)
Lead 1.2000
Selenium <5.5000
Mercury 0.0500



KELP EXTRACT POWDER 1-0-19

Arsenic 28.6000 (eh gads)
Cadmium 1.0000
Cobalt 1.0500
Lead 1.0000
Selenium 1.0000
Mercury 0.1000


Oh here's some blood and bone examples. Organic my arse..... There is no such thing as organics - it's a scientifically flawed myth. Organic soils are full of both organic and inorganic heavy metals and these are uptaken by plants. The word organics is false advertising and in every way scientific mumbo jumbo circulated by hippy capitalists cashing in on a multi billion dollar industry.

2-14-0 GRANULATED STEAMED BONE MEAL

Arsenic 0.2500
Cadmium <0.0030
Lead <0.0410
Selenium 0.5600
Mercury 37.5000 (check out the mercury ---- Jesus, talk about mad hatters disease)




GARDEN SAFE BONE MEAL 6-12-0

Arsenic <10.0000
Cadmium <0.5000
Lead 1.0000
Selenium <10.0000
Mercury <0.0500


OK - how bout some earthworm castings....



EARTHWORM CASTINGS BLEND 8-0-0

Arsenic 25.6100
Cadmium <0.1000
Lead <0.1000
Selenium <0.0500
Mercury <0.2000


WORM CASTINGS 1-.1-.3

Arsenic 9.8800
Cadmium 1.5100
Lead 41.0000
Selenium 6.2100
Mercury 0.1100





Ammonia hmmm. NH4 represents about 1% of total N in hydro nutes typically. Added as ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulfate (or UAN etc).

OK so now I get these claims of the petrochemical industry. Wow!!! 1 tiny example and a flawed one at that when discussing ammonium and the petrochemical industry. They use natural gas (i.e. methane) as a source for hydrogen which is then catalytically reacted with nitrogen (which is synthetically derived from air) = 3H2 + N2 → 2NH3

So methane CH4 (which is formed from organic matter and billions of cattle, sheep etc farting; So we have one carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms ---- still a bit confused about the petrochemical industry??? It's a random grab at a misunderstood concept but sounds extremely sensational and no doubt is used as fear mongering blither by the corporate capitalist organic marketers who would be happy to starve the developing world while lining their pockets with grossly overpriced fruit and veg.

Devils advocate.... MR

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

Bone and blood meal... gotta love meat industry by-products =]

 

[Lazyman]

thx Lazy, im trying not to be caught up in that so ill get my knowledge from here.

should i delete the post to keep thread clean?

I probably came off as overly harsh, and cherry picking data, but "Scientists" who publish their data as facts and work for companies selling their product make me skeptical to start with.

I think it's a good contribution to the thread though, if nothing else than to expose the roots of bullshit. If anyone can find damning data about any of my quotes I'd certainly be happy to read it, and admit when I'm wrong.

But I tend not to get involved in arguments that I can't back up, so it doesn't happen more often than I can help.

 

[Danks2005]

I don't use fish emulsion, or kelp, just backyard compost.

It ain't so much the rock, it's how they go about getting the rock that pisses me off, I see too much stripped land and gyp stacks as it is.

And, a cow, fuck a cow, I like my steak bloody as hell, and have no problem with blood or bone meal. Cows=renewable resource, and it don't get much better than a rare ribeye and a fatty.

I used chem nutes for quite some time before going organic, and I don't go around shittin on peoples chem hydro grows, I'm just telling you why I grow organic.

And if you need chem nutes to save 2 billion people from a certain death, then I say mine away, at that point it is worth the risk, but for me I choose not to use them for growing pot, I'm usually up to my ears in pot, I don't need to squeeze any more out of em.

Have you ever been to a chemical plant or phosphate mining facility, I have and I can tell you it ain't good for the environment. I've seen holes blown through concrete and steel from nitric acid leaks, these places ain't pretty.

 

[grapeman]

If we all stop eating meat there will no need for billions of sheep and cattle and we can make a significant impact here alone. Anyone for a steak??

A question. If I don't eat meat, will that lying, thieving, energy hog of a fuck al gore give his ill begotten millions back? He sure looks like he eats steak 3 times a day.

If he ain't giving the money back, fuck it, I'm eating meat.

I got no problem grinding up all them fish and feeding 'em to my plants cuz they sure love it. I'll use your share of the fish too if that's ok with you.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

Oh goody... I was hoping someone claiming the higher moral ground would be using blood and bone meal. Factory farming and the meat industry are paragons of ethics and environmental responsibility, eh?

Modern farming is at least as damaging and unethical as mining.

Environmental impacts of factory farming can include:
Deforestation for animal feed production
Unsustainable pressure on land for production of high-protein/high-energy animal feed
Pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer manufacture and use for feed production
Unsustainable use of water for feed-crops, including groundwater extraction
Pollution of soil, water and air by manure
Land degradation (reduced fertility, soil compaction, increased salinity, desertification)
Loss of biodiversity due to eutrophication, acidification, pesticides and herbicides
Worldwide reduction of genetic diversity of livestock and loss of traditional breeds
Species extinctions due to livestock-related habitat destruction (especially feed-cropping)

Animal welfare impacts of factory farming can include:
Close confinement systems (cages, crates) or lifetime confinement in indoor sheds
Discomfort and injuries caused by inappropriate flooring and housing
Restriction or prevention of normal exercise and most of natural foraging or exploratory behaviour
Restriction or prevention of natural maternal nesting behaviour
Lack of daylight or fresh air and poor air quality in animal sheds
Social stress and injuries caused by overcrowding
Health problems caused by extreme management for fast growth and high productivity
Reduced lifetime (longevity) of breeding animals (dairy cows, breeding sows)
Fast-spreading infections encouraged by crowding and stress in intensive conditions

Fish ferts?

"Eat first, then ethics" wrote German poet Bertolt Brecht. But even Brecht would be horrified by the "fish apocalypse" of 2048 that Boris Worm of Dalhousie University predicts in the November 3rd issue of Science. As far as fish are concerned, we appear to be eating not only first, but without forethought, and we never get around to the ethics.

The problem of diminishing saltwater fish populations is not a new one; the United Nations has reported consistently since the mid-1990s that all 17 of the world's major fishing areas have been fished to the point that sustainability is seriously in question for many if not most of the commercially harvested species there. The most famous fishing areas of North American lore, such as the Grand Banks and Georges Bank, have been closed and reopened with hardly any planning, as environmentalist and commercial political lobbies each win their way for a month, year, or decade, but never in a process that ends in stewardship of the oceans.

Those at the top of the fish business' food chain aren't doing so well financially, despite the appearance that industry prevails in matters of regulation of fishing. Both large commercial fisheries and small immigrant families with one boat in places like New Bedford, Mass., find themselves unable to eke out a living from tuna and swordfish and scallops. Fishing doesn't really make much money even for those who have become adept at vacuuming fish from the sea. In response, governments provide subsidies. That's not enough, however, to sustain fleets and shareholders, so companies turn from fishing cod and the like to fishing the sort of creatures that emerge from the sea so unpalatable that one knows immediately that they will have to be, as Wendell Berry put it, "prettified" until they no longer "resemble anything that ever lived."

Either way, as stocks of fish that were once commercially undesirable have plummeted, large fish, marine mammals, and even birds have been robbed of a big piece of their food chain. And that means we too are affected, as some of our most intimate ecosystems - those that protect and nourish our food and water supply - become, in collapsing, a toxic abyss. Fish species that live near coastlines, reducing the risk of red tide and providing detoxification to water supplies, are disappearing.

The threat of the ocean's imminent collapse is a new kind of issue for bioethics, which you might call "disaster ethics." The problem is that the public is simply uninterested in the catastrophic consequences of decimating fish stocks. Debates about ozone holes, stem cells, and the intelligence of the design of life simply pale in comparison to what is likely to happen to our oceans.

The most visible evidence of the ?fish problem' is still invisible by comparison to Korean research fraud and votes on funding for stem cell research. But the fish story is more important by a long shot and requires actions far more simple than choosing a Senator: Stop eating creatures that are being fished to extinction, and tell your friends to stop, too.

Our species may not have crawled out of the oceans to build civilization, but our willingness to protect the oceans is a bulwark not just of the ethics of environmental stewardship but also of the responsibility to keep cities from being poisoned or falling into the ocean and millions from starving to death. It's a pretty high price to pay for sushi.

There's no time to do long-term studies of whether fish are disappearing. We can't eat before our ethics. The ethical decisions the human population makes in this decade about fishing will set into motion a way of thinking and acting about the earth and its ecosystems that will take ethics off the plate entirely for our grandchildren. They will live in a world where the decisions about fish and the oceans have less to do with whether to eat swordfish than about what kind of engineered fishcell they'd like with their chips. Our policy about fishing isn't just fishy; it's bad science coupled with bad ethics. And at the end of the day, that will mean empty nets.



Read more: Want Fish? Ethics First, Please - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/36663/#ixzz0nuPK2wOP

 

[Danks2005]

I know where my beef comes from, and it ain't these large corp. cattle farms, and I don't give two shits about the comfort of a cow, veal scalopini anyone.

I also catch my own fish, grocery store fish=second class in the kitchen.

On the ammonia thing, I stand corrected, did some reading this morning, and I didn't realise that methane was the main gas used, I have no prob with this, you can't stop methane.

Maybe your right, the environment needs to suffer to feed the masses, but I still like doing things the way nature intended in the garden, to each his own.

Why don't you guys go ahead and get back to science of organic/chem growing, this hippie bullshit is even making me sick.

 

[Danks2005]

I live near a fantastic fishery, I have family that raises cattle for beef, and I have quite a large veggie garden. I understand not everyone has this luxury, and must rely on grocery stores to keep from starving. Natural selection doesn't work when it's easy for everyone, modern times are a breeding ground for ignorance.

That last sentence was my general opinion, not directed at anyone here, you guys are obviously smarter than the average joe.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

I don't care where your meat and fish that you eat come from...
We're talking ethics of using commercial bone and blood meal, not about which fish taste better. Do you also make your own bone and blood and fish meal?

 

[Danks2005]

I told you what I use, backyard compost and compost tea, I also use my own vermicompost, and mollases, thats it and I have been very happy with the results.

I said I have no problem with those products, the reason is the cows will be slaughtered anyway, may as well use the bones and blood.