Living organic soil from start through recycling

[rrog]

Is it possible to get a decent soil moisture meter without breaking the bank? All the results I'm seeing on amazon are wishy-washy on the quality.

At CC's recommendation, I'm using Irrometer MLT, 6". About $65. Very fast reaction time, very accurate. Commercial grade analog equipment.

 

[all natural]

Speaking of college football, the Colorado Buffalos came to Autzen Stadium in Eugene to prove their metal against the Mighty Ducks and it was dismal.....

Oregon 70 - Colorado 14

The score seems more appropriate for a basketball game, no?

Go Ducks!

Not to be left out, the OSU Beavers are playing WSU Cougars <snerk> right now and it doesn't look good for our neighbors to the north.

Go Beavers!

Ducks are good and fast. But go to rivals.com and compare the size of Bama's team to Oregons and you will see why the SEC dominates. Their running backs are bigger than most of OU's linebackers. Then compare the O lines... and thats not even the scary part. Its when you realize that these guys are just as fast as Oregon or anyone else ... cant wait for 2014 when they will settle it on the field finally and stop with these silly computers.

 

[shmalphy]

Have BO and NLH been stabilized, or are they still cuttings from the f1s? What traits are do they breed true for, or is that what you hope to find out here?

You should release some beans on seedbay, gascan, I would buy some...

 

[FatherEarth]

Ive waded thru 40 something pages, and been taking notes. Lots of chit chat to filter through. Someone school me on this no ph meter or checking. I use an all organic just add water soil mix, and use lots of compost tea. I adjust my waters PH before I do anything to it, using mainly Silicate or EJ catalyst depending on which way it needs to go. My water fluctuates from 6.3 to 5.1 when the water table is low. When its 6.3 I add small amount for gypsum to my soil for balance at the start of a new grow. .03 tons per AF recommended by an irrigation suitability report I had done. Im trying to get past the PH meter thing but my knuckles are still white clenching my Hanna 99121 direct soil PH meter. Its hard to break old habits, someone show me the way.

 

[IncredibowlBoss]

Ive waded thru 40 something pages, and been taking notes. Lots of chit chat to filter through. Someone school me on this no ph meter or checking. I use an all organic just add water soil mix, and use lots of compost tea. I adjust my waters PH before I do anything to it, using mainly Silicate or EJ catalyst depending on which way it needs to go. My water fluctuates from 6.3 to 5.1 when the water table is low. When its 6.3 I add small amount for gypsum to my soil for balance at the start of a new grow. .03 tons per AF recommended by an irrigation suitability report I had done. Im trying to get past the PH meter thing but my knuckles are still white clenching my Hanna 99121 direct soil PH meter. Its hard to break old habits, someone show me the way.

Need for pH adjusting disappears of your soil has an adequate CEC (cation exchange capacity) - the cation exchange sites allow for hydrogen ions to get swapped around, which modulates pH (potential Hydrogen). In a living soil, the pH will change throughout the day - even within an hour or two, because this cation exchange cycle is always going on and grabbing a hydrogen here and dropping one off there. At least that's how I understand it - one of the masters in here will prolly answer ya better.

EDIT: what I CAN say with certainty is that adding humic material cleared up all my 'nute lockout' problems (by adding CE sites), and I've never had to look back. Haven't seen my Hanna in about 9 moths.

 

[Seandawg]

I still have my pH probe. I use it as a fly swatter lmao.

 

[Neo 420]

My ph pen is collecting dust thanks to coot, gas, burn and all you organic mofos......

 

[rrog]

The plant ultimately controls the pH in a living soil regardless of your efforts.

The bacteria are basic, while Fungi are acidic.

The plant feeds the microlife and controls the exact balance of bacteria / fungus.

Because the plant controls this ratio, it also controls the final pH.

 

[ClackamasCootz]

Earth Juice Catalyst (I've never heard of this so I looked at the label online to see what it contains)

MSRP - $14.99 per qt.
Application rate: Use 1-4 tbs/gallon of water, depending upon need.

Marketing Screed: A stimulant to plant growth. Use in conjunction with other organic fertilizers as a soil drench or foliar feed. Natural enzymes, hormones, vitamins, amino acids, nutrients, sugars, plant acids and surfactants encourage compact growth, nutrient uptake, increased yields, and enhanced flavors.

Derived from oat bran, kelp, wheat malt, molasses and yeast.

Each and every claim is accurate, actually, via the addition of kelp meal. Kelp meal does provide natural enzymes, hormones, vitamins, amino acids, nutrients, sugars, plant acids and surfactants encourage compact growth, nutrient uptake, increased yields, and enhanced flavors

Kelp meal costs less than $1.20 per lb. in PDX. To make 5 gallons of kelp meal tea you only need to use 2 oz. per 5 gallons. A lb. of kelp meal (Acadian Seaplants, Ltd.) will make 40 gallons.

Oat bran? Sure, why not?

Wheat malt? Sprouted wheat, roasted for a few minutes then ground - malted wheat. Just like malted barley for brewing beer. The malting process is to allow the enzymes created in the germination process to be activated.

I believe that sprouting grass seeds (like wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc.) and then soaking the sprouted seeds for 48 hours will give you higher levels of enzymes by not being heated to 325F but it's your call.

Regardless, you can purchase 'wheat malt' at stores that sell the equipment and materials for brewing beer at home. Available in powder or liquid. I pay $1.50 per lb. for a malted barley which contains the highest enzyme levels. 1 lb. will make 96 gallons (1 tsp. per gallon) for $1.50 and I'm getting screwed because if I bought a 50 lb. bag the price would only be $.89 per lb. - LOL

Molasses - everyone knows about this one.

Yeast? Catch-all phrase to enhance the label and nothing else. What strain? Natural airborne yeast? The discharge from a baboon's vagina during mating season?

What any of these ingredients would provide for pH up or down is mystifying to say the least.

CC

 

[DARC MIND]

Have BO and NLH been stabilized, or are they still cuttings from the f1s? What traits are do they breed true for, or is that what you hope to find out here?

You should release some beans on seedbay, gascan, I would buy some...

BO is a cutting of rare heirloom BOEL genetics just like TO..i think capt is looking/testing for a good partner to put this unique treat in bean form...
NLH is a f2, from a purchased pack of seeds,back in the day 1991
imo shes more NL leaning (lowering flower time,beefyr yield) but thers plenty of f3's to also choose /work from..

^^^^^NLH is something neat if you know anything about the history of nevils work & how it effected the commercial genepool for 20-odd years...

A cross of the Haze males to the Northern Lights 5 clone was the key hybrid Nevil made, it formed the basis for both Super Silver Haze, Mango Haze, Jack Herer and Nevil's Haze. Others used NL5HzA too, mostly a particular cutting that Nevil gave to some people, and that's where Kali Mist, Amnesia Haze and all the other Dutch Hazes come from

 

[ClackamasCootz]

I still have my pH probe. I use it as a fly swatter lmao.

They are also effective in the battle against body lice which is a little known fact.

CC

 

[ClackamasCootz]

1. Sustainability folks, Permaculture folks, and Organics folks don't sit down to design things together nearly enough

You're way ahead of 90% of the organic farmers and probably 99% of organic gardeners if you understand this fact. Not in the political or cultural sense, but organic farmers are, by and large, pretty conservative. They plan their work and work their plan which doesn't involve buying the latest whatever is being promoted to save humanity.

A day well spent......

 

[Scrappy4]

Ive waded thru 40 something pages, and been taking notes. Lots of chit chat to filter through. Someone school me on this no ph meter or checking. I use an all organic just add water soil mix, and use lots of compost tea. I adjust my waters PH before I do anything to it, using mainly Silicate or EJ catalyst depending on which way it needs to go. My water fluctuates from 6.3 to 5.1 when the water table is low. When its 6.3 I add small amount for gypsum to my soil for balance at the start of a new grow. .03 tons per AF recommended by an irrigation suitability report I had done. Im trying to get past the PH meter thing but my knuckles are still white clenching my Hanna 99121 direct soil PH meter. Its hard to break old habits, someone show me the way.

Ending dependency on ph meters is all about good compost. This should help....scrappy

Soil Biology and pH by Jeff Lowenfels

The success of the AeroGarden, the first plug-and-grow aeroponic kitchen appliance, is testament to the fact that ordinary people do not understand the concept of pH and don't want to deal with it in their growing situations. Make it so you can practice hydroponics without this chemistry barrier and they will come, apparently.

Frankly, the concept of pH also confuses soil gardeners. Heck, the definition of pH was inadvertently reversed in my book "Teaming With Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web." (Yes, some readers noticed; I received two "you made a mistake" notes. But that's not as many as I thought I'd receive.) Fortunately, the mistake was corrected in time for the second printing.

In any case, soil gardeners have been told certain plants require acidic conditions- for example, rhododendrons and azaleas- or else they won't grow. The solution advocated by most experienced gardeners is not dissimilar from what a hydroponics grower would do: adjust the pH with chemicals, such as agricultural lime, to make the soil more alkaline. To make alkaline soil more acid, we are told to add sulfur. Because they are chemical changes, these solutions work for a short time. But to me pH is a biological matter.

A bit of quick pH review is in order (if only to make amends for the mistake in my book). You may remember that pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution on a scale of 1 to 14; 1 being most acidic and 14 being most alkaline. A more technical description is that pH is the measurement of the concentration of hydrogen ions, H+. If you have lots of H+, the pH is low, or acidic. If you have few of them, the pH is high, or alkaline.

If you are adding fertilizers and using chemicals, you are stuck in the chemical realm. Organic gardeners, soil food webbies in particular, realize that pH has more to do with biology than it does with chemistry. That's because of the way plant roots take up nutrients. Root hair surfaces are covered with positive electrical hydrogen cations. Think of these charges as ping-pong balls. If soil particles are small enough, their surfaces are covered by these ping-pong ball charges, both positive (cation) charges and negative (anion) charges. These cations are not limited to hydrogen; they also include calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, iron, and ammonium. All are important plant nutrients.

When a root encounters a clay or organic particle, it can exchange one of its hydrogen cation for another positive one from the particle. It can choose from calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, iron, ammonium and hydrogen, as these are all cations carried by clay and silt and are all, as luck would have it, major plant nutrients.

This is known, incidentally, as cation exchange capacity, or CEC. Sand and silt have low CECs, because they comprised of particles that are too large to hold electrical charges. This is why humus and clay are needed to make soil good. They are extremely small particles and can carry cations.

So, back to pH. Every time a plant root exchanges a hydrogen ion for a nutrient ion, it increases the concentration of hydrogen ions in solution. Thus, the pH goes down and things should become more acidic.

Ah, but things usually balance out because the positive cations on the root surface also attract negative charges. Here, hydroxy ions (OH-) are the exchange ping-pong balls, and addition of hydroxy ions lowers the concentration of hydrogen ions in the solution, and pH goes up.

I know this still sounds like chemistry and not biology. However, each plant has an optimum pH requirement. What soil growers need to know (and hydroponics growers don't) is that the type of bacteria and fungi attracted to a plant's rhizosphere by the plant's exudates has a lot to do with setting this optimal pH. Bacteria produce a slim that raises the pH, and fungi produce acids that lower the pH. Since the plant is in control of the biology it attracts, in a natural system, it is the plant that determines the pH, and not some chemistry teacher.

So, while you may forget the chemistry of pH, at least remember there is a biological side. Do no harm to it, and you shouldn't have to worry much about pH when you grow plants in soil. Moreover, the nutrient exchanges that occur above also have a lot to do with what kind of bacteria and fungi are attracted to the root zone as some like higher pH and others lower pH.

 

[Scrappy4]

Earth Juice Catalyst (I've never heard of this so I looked at the label online to see what it contains)

It's actually a pretty good product. I used to use it for foliar feeding vegging plants. But like you pointed out it is easy to duplicate or exceed. My favorite of the moment is alfalfa meal soaked over a day or two. Then diluted and used foliarly. It wouldn't hurt to add a pinch of kelp meal too. Be carefull using this during the stretch though, the growth in early flower is unreal......scrappy

 

[Scrappy4]

To expand on my previous post for EJ catalyst. The Earth Juice line is mostly fermented and fairly easy to duplicate. For recipe ideas look in the sticky section on fermented plant extracts. And the EJ ingedients are listed on the bottles.

Seeing that the home grower does not have to worry (as much) about exploding bottles of gunk messing up the grow store shelf, you don't have to chemically stop the fermenting process. So once again homemade is best...scrappy

 

[MrSterling]

How to say mean things without being mean...I've come to be apprehensive of friends advocating "permaculture". It's not permaculture's fault, I like much of what I read. It's that the couple dozen people I know into it in real life half-ass it and give it a bad reputation. They're younger new-agey "hippies" more interested in finding something that fits into their all-is-love na-ma-ste lifestyle than a system which actually works.

Like the couple I know who started a "permaculture farm" to brag about on facebook but they just work 9-5s and have a few fowl. I ran into them last week, after trying to tell the husband about myccorhizal fungi for the past year. "oh hey have you ever heard of this stuff before? You put it on the roots, it's fungi" he asked as he held up an ancient bottle he'd gotten at a yard sale. A "permaculture" farm, but no interest in actual science or organics. They just want the feel good earth-love and none of the hard work.

All that annoyance aside, I really enjoy the concept of earthship homes. There's a lot of energy to be saved in building in the ground.

 

[Microbeman]

The plant ultimately controls the pH in a living soil regardless of your efforts.

The bacteria are acidic, while Fungi are basic.

The plant feeds the microlife and controls the exact balance of bacteria / fungus.

Because the plant controls this ratio, it also controls the final pH.

Little correction;

bacteria trend towards alkaline (pH+) [eg. more alkaline in vegetable garden, grass]
fungi trend towards acidic (pH-) [eg. more acidic soil in forest]

 

[rrog]

Little correction;

bacteria trend towards alkaline (pH+) [eg. more alkaline in vegetable garden, grass]
fungi trend towards acidic (pH-) [eg. more acidic soil in forest]

 

[Gascanastan]

Have BO and NLH been stabilized, or are they still cuttings from the f1s? What traits are do they breed true for, or is that what you hope to find out here?

You should release some beans on seedbay, gascan, I would buy some...

Earth Juice...juice of the Earth...what miracles await the human experience that you can buy in a gallon jug.

Blue Orca is a F1 cut from 1984.....NLH is an F2 male from 1991.

I think Coot describes the origins of these types somewhere in this thread,but good luck searching page after page with so much chit chat yada yada bla bla my cock is bigger than yours shit we do here.....

Anyway...

I've done more crosses with TO than BO...and there's one thing I'm seeing from the only 3 BO crosses compared to the many crosses done with TO.

TO seems to have offspring with phenotypes that vary greatly....while BO produces offspring that look much more uniform.

The BO x BMR line was gifted to Mr.Greengenes who will no doubt do some work on it. After the first few beans yeilded a female with a shaggy appearance that he seemed to really dig.....he named the cross 'Cousin It'....S. Cal.

The BO x Cherry Bomb looks pretty uniform as well...beans were sent to testers who describe better uniformity than the TO crosses.

Sooooooooo it is again with these BO x NLH.......I'd say that the BO is more stable for breeding than TO....but that's not to say that out of all the TO crosses you aren't going to find something phenomenal.

As for seed for donation to server fund.....

I am working on a couple lines for that,which if all goes well should be ready next year...mainly a TO x BMR Bx....AKA 'Kasmala Moon' and the Kali Mist x Burmese/Cherry Bomb...AKA 'Vandana Shiva'
Maybe the Space Cheese/BMR x (Cheesquake x Space cheese/BMR) as well...we'll call that 'Moonpuppy' for short.

I will not breed with F1 plants (that I make myself) that are PM prone or plants that suck in any way ....so this takes a while to find parents with the traits I expect combined with that PM resistance .with the exception of Subcools bullshit...that TGA shit always gets PM...right outta the seed~

I search for decent yields,pleasant effect,,strong stemmed,disease resistant,resin coated,flowers that are not too dense..or too loose,colorful,smelly,easy trimming,great bag appeal,and a fair flowering range.

If anyone want's to find out whether or not a plant is PM resistant....grow it in the PNW and you'll know in a week or two...easy.

The NLH is PM resistant and known for it's high yield,Haze effect,and hybrid vigor.

The Blue Orca is known to me a s serious medicine...just top notch medicine really..1 hit and 'well being' becomes you. BO is not exactly PM resistant.

It looks like the BO x NLH F1 kids are loaded with some killer vigor...these are strong and fast beautiful plants....already some want out of the 1 gallon pots a week later.

This qualifies as Polyhybrid...yet the arrangement of this type of poly makes it special. The parents,although being of mixed origin...are not a massive bunch of types mixed together in a closet over the years...these are undisturbed by pollen chuckers. They exhibit more of a hybrid trait....no selections were done past Coot or Neville with these two parents....both qualify as pre-1990 genetics....with documented origins back beyond the 80's.

So....the few people that have the beans will notice what I did the first time I tested 4 females. Half were PM resistant and all had a bit of stretch in flower,but I would call that average.

Plants have a sativa dominant profile regardless of the fat leaves that the two strong ass Indica's put in the mix. Super sweet lemon smell.....like Lemonheads candy.

Sativa type smoke...which I preferred this smoke over any heavier Indica in my jugz for sure...such as TO herself..or TO x BMR.

I'd say it's something like a 60% sativa/40% Indica....or thereabouts.

As for releasing BO x NLH seed....I dunno man..I don't feel that's my call.

 

[John Deere]

I think Coot describes the origins of these types somewhere in this thread,but good luck searching page after page with so much chit chat yada yada bla bla my cock is bigger than yours shit we do here.....

Anyway...