My lil Organic Grow Round 1

-microbeman... An avacado eating dog is a healthy dog. I actually heard somewhere that avocados are toxic to dogs but with all the stuff ive seen her eat I would be wholy amazed if it was an avacado that did her in.

I'm pretty sure flowering depends on the variety. My tree started dropping usable fruit around late october, early novemberish. But my grandmother has a tree thats been there for as long as I can remember and that one has is drops fruit all summer long. We're only about 5 miles away from each other and generally at the same elavation so I can't really attribute it to any thing else. The mexican higjlands is a beautiful area. I habe family from juanaguato...I'm sure I didnt spell that right.

The worms do eat the skins but it takes much longer. I'm pretty sure it comes down that the skins just tougher and denser so they take longer to break down. If I dig out a skin theres usually a clump of worms inside it. I will say that I have very thin skimmed avos. Something like a Hassan ( which is more of a commercial avacado with a thicker skin do better for shipping) would prob take even longer to break down. Drying and pondering the skins wouldn't be a bad idea. I used to blend scraps up and the worms loved that and would consume pretty much everything I put in there pretty quickly. Now I don't go through all that effort and I just throw some food in amd cover it with hay. Ive got brocolli stocks that I swear must be 2 months old just sitting there untouched still.

Bummer sbout your garden. Hopefully you fix it up before spring time. If you're lazy like me you could just throw out some layers of hay( or leaves whatever) and compost and have good usable soil in a few months. Its not the prettiest way to plant a garden but it couldn't get much easier.

And selling trees is a fantastic idea. Jus be aware that from seed to fruit youre talking s few years at best. I read something yesterday when I was looking for nutrition content on the seeds that mentioned starting avo from cutting. That might be a good option too.

A little nutrient profile of avo seeds:

NUTRITION INFORMATION FOR AVOCADO SEEDS
(per average sized pit)

95 calories
25 g carbohydrate
17 g starch
6 g fiber
2 g sugar
1.5 g protein
0.5 g fat
240 mg vitamin C (400% DV)
163 mg potassium (5% DV_
16 mg magnesium (4% DV)
7 mg calcium (0.7% DV)
Sources:

Antioxidant activity and phenolic content of selected fruit seeds. Food Chemistry (2004) 88(3): 411-417.

Antioxidants in ‘Hass’ Avocado. South African Grower’s Association (2007) 30: 17-9.

Avocado (Persea americana) seed as a source of bioactive phytochemicals. Curr Pharm Des (2013) 19(34): 6133-40.

Variations in the Composition of Avocado Seed. California Avocado Society (1951) 35: 139-152 .


-big nasty...I like the name. Thanks for visiting. Sea Salt is a good source of micro and macro nutrients. Don't quote me on it but I think theyre just about all in there. Its pretty diluted I really dont think it will hurt. And sea water is the primary source of micro nutes in knf farming. I actually kind of regret buying it because I'm literally 5 minutes from the beach. Heavy metalz and arsenic can be found in slot of soils and foods. Its not really an issue except with rice becauze it stores the arsenic better than most other plants. Poisons are only poison when theyre in a high enough concentration. I guess I didnt really look into it that much though. Pretty sure I heard aboit sea-90 from boogie brew...I think. Dude uses it in his teas. But...what do I know. You could be right. I haven't really done any solid research.

If you really think about it, ALL salt is sea salt, even the mined stuff. Might be a few million years old but it still came from a sea evaporating.

I had an avacado tree in my yard (Choquett), where I grew up in SoFl, but they are totally different than the Hass varieties. The seed alone seemed bigger than a whole Hass and the Choquetts averaged about 3lbs each and only one crop/season. Loved to eat them right out of the shell with a bit of pepper and lemon. Weren't well suited for guac though like the Hass.

Wet

hahah i was watching Sam Peckinpah's"Convoy" while registering and Rubber Duck seemed too obvious to me

My main concern is a toxic buildup with a prolonged use,we can't avoid heavy metals in soil but i don't like the idea of feeding them on purpose and since our beloved seas are fucked up i'm trying not to use anything coming from the sea.Sodium as i said can cause major problems as it is antagonist of K and positive charged ions.Welcome to IC and please,forgive my mistakes as my english is a bit rusty.

Adding extra sodium is surely a bad thing.. even coastal plants you find in high salt soils grow better without sodium in their soil.. it just kills everything else off because of what Big Nasty rightly says.. plant tolerances to sodium of generally quite low.. i also suspect fairly alien to cannabis as well since it mostly grows in upland areas in the wild..

I was planning on just one gallon sapling trees and previously I grew one about 3 feet tall in 2 years.

I think you can trust BAS and their mineral mix. If you mixed it the way they advised, your soil should be well balanced. You are likely having watering issues, as previously mentioned. You are correct that the Oyster shell flower serves as your liming agent and you do not need to add additional lime as a pH buffer.

As for the metals in sea salt, I don’t think it’s a concern. They’re also found in ancient salt deposits that have NOT been exposed to modern pollution. My understanding is that Sea-90 is harvested in somewhere like New Zealand where the ocean is still in pretty pristine condition. I’m kinda hesitant about the adding salt thing but there’s lots of anecdotal evidence from growers that it’s helpful and seawater aid an important component (in small amounts) in Korean Natural Farming. I’m certainly no expert on all this but I’m guessing that fear of salt has some basis in its buildup in coco grows. In a organic soil, wouldn’t trace amounts of the salt be washed/flushed through the soil without a negative effect? On the other hand, there are certainly other ways to get all the trace minerals you really need into your soil without using it. Just saying, I don’t think it’s as scary or dangerous as many people think.

Nice to see a new thread in here! I’ve been absent for a bit and there doesn’t seem to be all that much activity in this section - my FAVORITE section!

wetdog-I think you're prob right. However all seasalt is not the same. According to the sea 90 website what the actual salt contains varies by where it was collected... which makes sense. I've never even heard of a choquette. I had to look them up. They don't make it to the West Coast.

Big Nasty- haha, I didn't even put those two together but I love that movie. I hear what you and Lost in a Sea of Green are saying. That definitely makes sense. And if I really think about there's not much difference between a chemically derived salt nutrient and a natural one.

The Sea 90 website has this to say about it:

Why doesn’t sodium chloride (salt) in SEA-90 harm soil and crops?
As a result of extensive research, Dr. Murray discovered that soil microbiological activity and plant growth and development is enhanced when the concentration of sodium chloride in seawater derived SEA-90 is applied at specific rates and in specific dilutions as a foliar spray and in hydroponic solutions.

also this:

Sodium (Na) is an element essential to all life. SEA-90 provides all essential minerals and trace elements in addition to the sodium. Much of our agricultural soils, especially in the Midwest and east of the Mississippi River, have significant sodium deficiencies due to the fact that sodium is water soluble and readily leaches from the soil. In addition organic farms are especially deficient having operated for many years without salt based chemical fertilizers. Soil specialists and consultants world-wide are now recommending applications of SEA-90 in small amounts (50-100 lbs per acre) to combat sodium deficiencies.

SeaAgri encourages its customers to consult a soil la and conduct soil tests to assure the presence of sodium is adequate for good plant growth and development (two to three percent).

Another positive aspect of SEA-90 is that it stimulates micro-organism populations in the soil. SeaAgri found that when SEA-90 is used as recommended, the soil microbes feast on the minerals and trace elements and their populations expand thereby improving the soil’s biology.

Obviously their info might be a little bias but it sounds legit enough. And I'm not trying to defend them but It seems like with anything else the key is to use it in the proper proportions. They state sodium is actually an essential part of a healthy soil. Which makes sense to me seeing as how we require sodium in our diets to be healthy. Too much is bad but so is not enough.

So it would seem that if you can apply it without going over the 2-3% mark it would be a good way to supply essential minerals and nutrients to your micro herds and therefore plants. If you were sodium deficient (which I've actually never even heard of) then it would be ideal.

And as far as your English goes I assumed you were a native speaker.

-Microbeman- That's not a bad idea. Pretty sure the #1 producer in the world of avacados is the state of Michoacan. Not sure if that's considered highlands but it's not too far from there. I've never grown one from seed. I guess I might as well try. Thanks for the inspiration.

-DTOM thanks for chiming in buddy and welcome to the party.

Yeah I feel like BAS is a pretty good company. I actually called them and spoke to the owner who was incredibly helpful when i was first starting up. They have some pretty good info on "education" part of their website in nice easy to digest laymans terms which is good for a simpleton like me.

And I agree with you on the heavy metals. They're present in a lot of rock dusts and people still use them.

And yeah according to Sea 90 because sodium is water soluble it is easily leeched from soil. I'm not really too concerned with it. And it's probably not something you want to use for a heavy top dress but 1 itty-bitty tsp per gallon foliar fed can't be that bad. I don't really think I need it. I have kelp and azomite (another thing I really don't need) which pretty much contains alot of the same stuff. The main benefit I could see to using sea salt or sea water would be if you couldn't or did not want to source rock dusts from long distances and lived near the ocean. Then it that case it makes lots of sense to use. I think I just read something about how great it was and bought some kind of on a whim.

And maybe this thread will help revive this section. I do alot of reading on perma culture and organic forums but you guys are much more fun.

I water my plants every fucking day. Just saying.



I can't imagine, looking at the size of your plants in relation to the containers they are in, waiting more than a day or two to water them.


You don't have to drown them with every watering. But I'm telling you, if you want to be a successful organic gardener, DONT LET THAT SHIT DRY OUT. Don't let your containers get light. When your soil dries out, whatever good microbes that were there and thriving and alive, are now dead or dormant at best.



Taking care of the microbes is what organic gardening is all about, in my experience.

They're still not even close to "dry." I definitely won't let them get completely dry. But I am going to let them get drier than "normal" before I water again in hopes that it balances things out. I think I added WAY to much bio-char and not enough pumice and they're just retaining their water really well. I feel like they're getting better. They're definitely growing like crazy... some faster than other. I attribute that to phenotype and plant location. I've been turning the pots every few days. I'm going to rearrange them with the smaller ones directly under the light next time I water in hopes of getting a more even canopy. I have one plant that is a monster compared to the others and it has like 10 tops. I hope it's a girl.

I agree with you on the microbes and am fully aware that they need water to be healthy. But if it's not over watering I have absolutely no clue what's going wrong. Just seems like the most logical thing. That and maybe the foliar they're getting is affecting them negatively but it's pretty mild so I dunno. I really don't think they need the foliar so I'm gonna cut it out for a bit. I'll keep hitting them with essential oils and neem as ipm but other than that they're just gonna get water until flowering. They are in fresh soil after all. It really shouldn't be missing anything. I appreciate your help. I was kind of freaking out at first. Just talking to you fine folks about it and reading through some of your grows has made me feel much better about the whole situation.

I was planning on doing no till but I think after this round I'm going to dump all my pots and add some extra pumice.

I also think they 1/3 ewc might be a little excessive. I've been looking at some commercial "LOS" mixes and alot of them are around 50% peat/ coco. But... that could be a production cost thing. I dunno. It's all a learning experience.

This is what's been growin on

This is what's been growin on

Just a quick update. Everything is growing great now. Prob should have kicked them into flower a few days ago but I've been really busy with the holidays and what not. What ever the issue was before seems to have worked itself out. I'm not 100% sure that the issue was over watering but I did change my watering procedure a bit so that could have been it. I've been watering in smaller doses and quit my foliar feed. At this point I'm pretty sure the foliar had something to do with it.

For some reason half of my plants are way bigger than the other half. Pheno type i'm assuming, i dunno really. but I'm going to put some plastic crates under the smaller ones to even out the canopy. I'm pretty excited. I've seen quite a few grows and I've never smelled plants that smelled so GOOD in veg. Some of them have a nice grapefruit/ tangerineish smell when you rub the stems. The strain is Citrus Black so I'm assuming that's where the "citrus" comes from. I looked up the lineage; it's Oregon Lemons x Black Banana. Not much info on either online but they both contain OG's. They're supposed to be heavy yielders. I'm assuming the smaller phenos are probably going to produce better flowers than the big plants. I'll be taking clones off all of them tomorrow. I have a buddy that will be interested in the heavy yielding phenos, I'm more looking for the dankest of the dank. Anyways here's some pics...