Living organic soil from start through recycling

[lostenspace]

"on another note - I got some Ahimsa neem oil today and I'm having a tough time getting it properly emulsified. even at 1:1 ratio of neemrotekt. I tried adding the neem/protekt mix to 75+ degree water, thinking it might help, but the oil still just floats to the surface. what am I missing here...? all the other neem oils I have used had no emulsification issues. for those of you with ahimsa oil - what is your method?"


If you have a resale shop, buy an old blender. I use an old bullet blender that works great and is compact also. When ever i do a kelp and alfalfa tea or mix neem/aloe w protek, i blend in a cup of water before bubbling/spraying.

 

[bigshrimp]

GAS

Aww you cant drop us poor kids some s1s.
Blow that TO wide open.

I guess ill have to go get some poopy pants kush...

 

[Gascanastan]

Aww you cant drop us poor kids some s1s.
Blow that TO wide open.

I guess ill have to go get some poopy pants kush...

TO?????there are no TO seeds.....that's a cut only from 1984. Sorry no S1's either....I won't do that out of respect for Coot..you know,those pesky morals getting in the way again....AND I just will never give the cut away to anyone who has big plans to make S1's ..not gonna happen. I've posted several pix and descriptions throughout this thread exactly what I had thought about sending in as a server fund donations.

TO x BMR....... aka the collectively named 'Kashmala Moon' of which the final breeding will be two Bx1 females x a selected for PM resistance F2 TO x BMR male......~@ that point I'm done w/it.

Possible....

BO x NLH Bx1

An F2 male NL#5 x Neville's Haze male from 1991 pollinating the sister of TO....'Blue Orca' which one more freeking time for the record is a 1971 Afghani out of Kandahar....crossed to 1976 Thai stick male.
I found an extremely beautiful and highly resinous BO x NLH male I can't seem to resist doing a Bx with to Blue Orca.

Which will bring the flowering time down to the mid 50's....but lose more of the NLH kickass-ness that she is famous for. So I definitley think that the original BO x NLH cross shall remain in existence....because it's pretty satty dominant as is before the proposed Bx.
Gas

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

do the really serious organic heads consider magnesium sulphate (epsom salts) organic ?????

Grey area. Its natural but i would/have only used it for foliar except this one time, in waterings, many moons ago that really fucked up my plants.

1/2 tsp per litre for 3 days in a row will take care of any magnesium and also sulphur deficiency if misted with some sticker/spreader like molasses (hey thats magnesium/calcium too!) Great if you have that tiger striped leaf effect that i find fairly common for my outdoors plants.

But i would rather use kelp, worm leachate, aloe vera or comfrey etc and not something mined to do the job these days.

For a hot bath? Fuck yeah load it in...

http://www.saltworks.us/salt_info/epsom-uses-benefits.asp

 

[Harry Hoosier]

baby red worm are red...

except when they are white or pink.

 

[RanchoDeluxe]

On the aloe. I bought a bottle by mistake that had potassium sorbate in it. Gave my plants a foliar with it. Still had praying leaves. Freaked me out anyway so I grabbed a bottle with just citric acid for the plants.

I started using the preservative aloe for myself. It's like drinking a gallon of water. Great for hangovers. I even started giving it to my trusty ole yellow Lab.

 

[unthing]

aloe vera extract and horse chestnut used in cosmetics, just like the almost infamous sea minerals..what else they have to offer?
it's a long thread and i don't remember it all if this been gone through already.

 

[Cann]

aloe, horse chestnut, yucca, etc. = saponins.

to quote cootz:

"Aside from the foaming (surfactant) benefit, Saponins trigger the plant's Systemic Acquired Resistance (SAR) as well as the Hormonal Acquired Resistance (HAR) - auto-immune compounds created by plants for defense against a number of pathogens."

"The Saponins and Salicylic acid in Aloe vera are what prompted me to give it a try. After a couple of years using it on a regular basis I wouldn't want to grow plants without it, i.e. it's a 'must have' from my perspective."

hope that is what you were asking...


also - thanks everyone for the answers in regards to the ahimsa neem..i'll test out those methods ASAP. should I invest in an immersion blender? been thinking about it for a while...

 

[bajangreen]

Beware i used seed-sprout soak on a spot where i saw phantasmal growth on the ones in seedling to vegetative stage but the ones in early flowering were very negatively impacted stalled for about a week.

 

[shmalphy]

I don't think it was the seed sprout teas... They certainly don't slow anything down..

 

[Microbeman]

except when they are white or pink.

Timbuktu;

As Harry has stated they can be white but that is usually (in my collection) for only a few days. They rapidly turn pink or red or as
W89 states, some (most of mine) are born red/pink. It may depend on genetics and foodstock.

 

[Cann]

yeahhh....i applied a seed sprout tea to my ladies at week 2 flowering, nothing but amazing results...not sure what is going on for you bajangreen....

what were your methods?

 

[Gascanastan]

Some people knock on the back door and come in through that door....reverse engineering type thinking,not really bad...despite how uncommon or dysfunctional it is. Leave it up to bajagreen to be the only one who had issues w/it...
Myself the stuff rocked my garden like nothing else...I dunno man. There is a certain procedure to follow.

 

[Cann]

lol yeah thats what I was thinking...its pretty hard not to get results from the seed teas...and I'm 100% agreed about kicking in the back door...the easiest way to solve a puzzle is to start at the end and trace your way backwards who cares if it is the culturally accepted "right" way or not...

 

[Gascanastan]

BTW...
I've been pondering the soil recipe on page #1.

I should mention that temperatures have a lot to do with the breakdown rates of the components. It's not going to properly breakdown sitting in the backyard in an upper Michigan winter for 6 months.

The mix needs warm and stable temps to breakdown at what I would consider a 'normal' rate for these types of soil mixes.

 

[W89]

I have been using the seed sprout teas with every watering, nothing but great results from this end... I wait till the sprouts are 1 inch or so and then bubble for 36 hours..

 

[DuckDuckGoose]

BTW...
I've been pondering the soil recipe on page #1.

I should mention that temperatures have a lot to do with the breakdown rates of the components. It's not going to properly breakdown sitting in the backyard in upper Michigan for 6 months.

The mix needs warm and stable temps to breakdown at what I would consider a 'normal' rate for these types of soil mixes.

thanks for pointing that out Gas. i have my mix in my crawl space and it gets super cold in there so i use a heater to keep the temps a bit warmer to help break it down quicker. for a while it was staying moist and not evaporating any water at all but the heater sorted it out. it's been sitting for about a month and should be ready to go. if it was outside where i live it would be under a half foot of snow and frozen solid. what do you think a minimum temp should be? in the 60's maybe?

DDG

 

[Cann]

gas - great point...this may explain why my soil mix still smells a bit like ammonia after 4+ weeks of aging. I live in so-cal, but it's been dipping into the 40's or lower almost every night for the last month - with a frost here and there. sometimes the top layer of my soil would freeze...

how much could this affect microbe activity, given potential 70+ degree temperature during the day? and how would I keep things more stable without bringing soil inside? lol...thats the last thing the gf wants

 

[Gascanastan]

thanks for pointing that out Gas. i have my mix in my crawl space and it gets super cold in there so i use a heater to keep the temps a bit warmer to help break it down quicker. for a while it was staying moist and not evaporating any water at all but the heater sorted it out. it's been sitting for about a month and should be ready to go. if it was outside where i live it would be under a half foot of snow and frozen solid. what do you think a minimum temp should be? in the 60's maybe?

DDG

Guessing 60-65 would be good...bump it up to 75 and it'll start to move.

MM proly has better temp suggestions for microlife than I.

The soil would need to be stored in an enclosed area where it can at least generate it's own heat and hold it. A garage,(typically where a lot of water heaters are,a tool shed maybe...where you could turn on a 100 watt bulb to keep the temps up in that space.

I had a crazy idea to use an electric blanket once....not a good idea. It never made it past 3 seconds of thought at the time.

 

[Scrappy4]

gas - great point...this may explain why my soil mix still smells a bit like ammonia after 4+ weeks of aging. I live in so-cal, but it's been dipping into the 40's or lower almost every night for the last month - with a frost here and there. sometimes the top layer of my soil would freeze...

how much could this affect microbe activity, given potential 70+ degree temperature during the day? and how would I keep things more stable without bringing soil inside? lol...thats the last thing the gf wants

Cann, that smell is most likely N being off gassed. It is also a sign your mix is not ready to grow in just yet. Even if it gets freezing the microbes should keep the pile warmer than the ambient air temps. My last soil mix was mixed hot but I gave it three months, and then it worked just fine, but I'm sure if i used it at one month it would have burned my plants......scrappy