wtfn's 4000w legal medical soil food web organic grow show

[surfguitar]

Lookin good man!

 

[whythefnot]

I liked how this last batch of fungal worm castings turned out for tea, and since I'll be making my last application with it tonight I decided to make up a new batch using the same ratios, but tweaking the recipe slightly.

I used 4x15oz beer cups of castings, or about 60oz/7.5cups -- to that I added 3.5Tbsp/cup oats, or 1.6 cups oats. But this time I blended the oats until they were coarsely ground before putting them into the mix. That should really supercharge the fungal growth. I'm hoping to see hyphae within 3 days so I can continue applying the tea almost daily.

Any other growers here getting quaker oats and a commercial blender involved?

 

[silver hawaiian]

wtfn

I like it, I think.. ? Is the idea of the oats a source of sugars? (Why not just molasses?) Is it a more complex source?

 

[whythefnot]

wtfn

I like it, I think.. ? Is the idea of the oats a source of sugars? (Why not just molasses?) Is it a more complex source?

Honestly I'm not entirely sure, but I think you're on the right track. If you were to prep castings with some moist molasses you'd get a more bacterial brew, but the castings would probably go anaerobic before brewing. Jeff Lowenfels mentions a variation on that technique in the book as a way to speed up brew times.
But oats and other grain crops are a preferred fungal food, so adding them a few days in advance of brewing with a little moisture allows the fungus to get a head start in advance of the brew. That's about all the info I have on it. You've read Teaming with Microbes, right?

 

[silver hawaiian]

Honestly I'm not entirely sure, but I think you're on the right track. If you were to prep castings with some moist molasses you'd get a more bacterial brew, but the castings would probably go anaerobic before brewing. Jeff Lowenfels mentions a variation on that technique in the book as a way to speed up brew times.
But oats and other grain crops are a preferred fungal food, so adding them a few days in advance of brewing with a little moisture allows the fungus to get a head start in advance of the brew. That's about all the info I have on it. You've read Teaming with Microbes, right?

Once and several more times fractionally

So help me understand a little better - so you're taking the oats, blending/cracking them, .. And then what? Soaking them for a few days prior to adding the EWC and o2? That would definitely increase the available sugars, a la brewers cracking their grain and soaking..

You mentioned the 60 oz/EWC you'll be tossing with the 1.6 C of cracked oats.. How much tea do you anticipate this to make?

Definitely diggin' the lesson here

 

[whythefnot]

So help me understand a little better - so you're taking the oats, blending/cracking them, .. And then what?

I blend the oats, then add them to the EWC immediately, then moisten the whole thing and stir it up real well. Then I leave it in the warmest spot around, the flower room, until I see mycelia growing. Word on the street is that baby oatmeal is the best stuff around, but I'm po' and I have quaker oats already.

The idea here, I believe, is that fungus takes longer to start multiplying in a brewing tea, so you provide them with their preferred food source so they can multiply like crazy and outpopulate the bacteria *before* you start the brew. If I'm not mistaken, bacterial populations in soil have no inverse relationship to fungal populations, and in fact are often encouraged by fungal growth. I'm not sure, but I would imagine the same would be true in a brewing tea. In other words, whether a tea is fungal-dominant or bacterial-dominant is determined entirely by the degree and speed of fungal growth, as bacteria are much more durable than fungi. Of course, if a tea is brewed long enough the fungi will eventually hog the nutrients, choking out a lot of the bacterial growth, and overall diversity takes a big hit. By preparing the castings first you increase fungal growth and maintain high levels of diversity with a relatively short brewing time. This is my working knowledge of this stuff -- I could have some of it mixed up.

You mentioned the 60 oz/EWC you'll be tossing with the 1.6 C of cracked oats.. How much tea do you anticipate this to make?

Definitely diggin' the lesson here

60oz of EWC + ~13oz of oats = 73oz of prepared EWC. I use 400ml per 4gal brew, or 13.5oz. 73oz divided by 13.5oz/brew = 5.4 brews. I'll probably end up making 5 4.5gal brews from that. I probably could have calculated a little better, but this isn't an exact science

I think you can use less starting material for larger brews and I'm not sure how it would affect this, but with this method my teas are typically in the 650 - 900ppm range, which makes them great for regular feeding as well as soil inoculation. That also makes them the probable source of the tip burn you see in most of my photos. That and the kelp extract at 2oz/gal.

 

[whythefnot]

13+ years after I cracked my first seed, I finally feel like I'm starting to get the hang of this.

 

[whythefnot]

Silver, I didn't forget about showing you my wax method. I've had a nice little chunk now for a while, but I had a really tough time getting more than .5g/oz from the sublime, even from buds, so I had to put it away for now. Really hurt me financially, but whatever, I'm a few weeks away from a harvest that will finally flip things around. As long as I have food on the table the bills can ride for a month.

 

[whythefnot]

I took photos for last Friday's update but I've been working 12+hr days for a while now and haven't had the time to upload them. At this point I should just hold out for this Friday's update and get a nice surprise effect. These SSHxBD's are freaking rock hard, very interesting and unique buds, like little beads stuck together. Having some K deficiency over here too, but I see it's worse on the plants that hadn't recovered as well a few weeks before flowering. Nothing too bad, shouldn't affect yield or potency significantly.

 

[Green81]

Hey WTFN, your really giving a good lesson here on true Organics, thanks for the education, I'm interested in seeing your new pics, they must be chunking-up right now.

Peace

G81

 

[whythefnot]

Day 42

Update time!!!

Things are going well. I'm a little short on K, which I was sort of expecting from the beginning. I'll try and get some greensand and jamaican guano for next round.

This is how you know your castings are fungal:

Blue bubbas:

 

[whythefnot]

Super Silver Haze:

 

[bobblehead]

I would disagree about the lack of K judging by the tip burn. You could have a soil test done for $25 and find out for sure. Peat has a lot of K.

 

[whythefnot]

Ahhh I was hoping I was short on K because it would be the easy answer to what's going on in here. I've always had humidity issues in this room, but it has been stable in the 70's for a long time now. 3 out of 4 of my reflectors create hot spots, which definitely negatively affected whatever is happening in here, but it doesn't explain why some of the plants on the edges of the screen are spotting too.

I was overwatering for about 2 weeks, caught it last week and they are dry now. These symptoms seemed to coincide. Still looks a little like VPD but what do I know?

And that's a big thumbs up on the soil test. I wanted to let it settle a little before I got one, then I ran out of money. I'm planning to have one done at harvest time.

 

[bobblehead]

Yes over watering will make your plants look like that too. Over watered=imbalanced. Once the leaves are damaged they can't get back to 100%, you have to observe the new growth. It is possible to over fertilize even with organics... I would just feed your plants plain water for the rest of the grow. Ime less is more.

 

[Toxsik 8]

cute little forest

 

[whythefnot]

Yes over watering will make your plants look like that too. Over watered=imbalanced. Once the leaves are damaged they can't get back to 100%, you have to observe the new growth. It is possible to over fertilize even with organics... I would just feed your plants plain water for the rest of the grow. Ime less is more.

Thanks, that's good to hear. I'm really not too worried about it given that I only have 3 weeks left but it's good to know that it's probably just my lack of experience/expertise watering large beds and not environmental factors that I don't understand.
I figured I'd have a hard time burning them since I barely amended anything into the soil, but I was definitely wrong about that. I had been feeding them kelp 2x weekly in addition to ~3 teas per week up until week 5 and now I'm on teas only. I'll do what you recommend with one exception --- I have all these fungal castings ready now and I wanna USE 'EM! I may have to throw it on my garden plot out back honestly.

 

[silver hawaiian]

Thanks, that's good to hear. I'm really not too worried about it given that I only have 3 weeks left but it's good to know that it's probably just my lack of experience/expertise watering large beds and not environmental factors that I don't understand.
I figured I'd have a hard time burning them since I barely amended anything into the soil, but I was definitely wrong about that. I had been feeding them kelp 2x weekly in addition to ~3 teas per week up until week 5 and now I'm on teas only. I'll do what you recommend with one exception --- I have all these fungal castings ready now and I wanna USE 'EM! I may have to throw it on my garden plot out back honestly.

One of my weekend "to-do"s is to come back & re-reread your destructions on that whole deal. And then do!

 

[bobblehead]

When you have the money get yourself a blumat digital from sustainablevillage.com. it's like $45-55 I think. When my beds dry out to 180-200mbar I water them, and never before they dry out to those numbers. My trouble is judging how much water to use when transplanting. I think it's best to stay on the dry side. It's real easy to over water and once the water is in the soil you can't take it back.

If your plants are stressed they won't be able to absorb nutrients like healthy plants... biology and blablabla... feeding a bunch of tea to already stressed plants just throws things even more out of whack. Teas and foliar are of most benefit to healthy plants. You need to have the soil and environment right before you can really see the benefits ime.

 

[whythefnot]

When you have the money get yourself a blumat digital from sustainablevillage.com. it's like $45-55 I think. When my beds dry out to 180-200mbar I water them, and never before they dry out to those numbers. My trouble is judging how much water to use when transplanting. I think it's best to stay on the dry side. It's real easy to over water and once the water is in the soil you can't take it back.

I've been meaning to ask you this... I know you're a die hard fan of the digital blu mats and you have the experience to back it up, but blu mat doesn't make a digital controller, right? You're hand-watering then, right? And you prefer that over automated waterings? Is it all in the precision that the blu mat digitals provide? Seems really counter-intuitive.

Also, I really don't think my plants are as stressed as you make them out to be. They got a little tip burn when I was heavily foliar feeding in the first two weeks of flower, but I cut that out when I noticed the burn, and they just haven't had the new growth to replace it. They got a little splotchy while I was overwatering for a while but other than some yellow leaf edges (a K def pattern), mostly directly under the lights, things seem to be moving along very well. All of the lower foliage has retained its full color and turgidity, and only the leaves directly under the lights have any kind of severe damage. The SSHxBD seems to have done a little better overall, with very minimal damage except to the tallest of tops.