Round Infinity

Heady; That is great to know that the roves are not impacted by neem sprays. Also that another grower is testifying success at having a colony form from the purchased strain.

The best way is to bring local rove beetles from outdoors but this is not practical for everyone. Thanks for the description Vortex of the ongoing fluxuations as small patches of pests appear briefly and then disappear.

I really do not think that the microbial populations on the leaf surfaces are as imperative to growth as the soil microbes. However they are important to disease prevention/suppression. The leaf surface itself is important for nutrient assimilation and processing so keeping it non-gunked up is preferable. Perhaps we will learn more shortly about the value of phyllosphere residents. I think the spraying and cleaning of leaf surfaces is a balance which each grower must figure out for themselves.

When we took a harvest we sometimes stripped off a bunch of fan leaves and laid them on the soil for a while to help give bugs a chance to disembark. I would think that a living and non-living mulch will keep most of the good bug colonies happy; certainly roves.

Is it Sea4 who described them as the tigers of the insect world? This is very apt.

Avinash.miles said:

so anyone adding kombucha scoby to their soil?
last round i poured my leftover GT's kombucha remnants (little bits of solids in the bottom, which given time more sugar liquid turn to more scoby layers) to my soil, no ill effects i could tell.... scobies were pretty much gone or unnoticeable by harvest time (at least 5 weeks). im curious if there is a better way to make use of them?
can't remember who, but someone here on icmag brought up the idea of dropping scoby on the soil/compost, so i gave it a try.

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Kinda late here. We feed kombucha to the soil, spray with it, drink it...fantastic stuff

http://aem.asm.org/content/69/4/1875.full#sec-7

Epiphytes are involved in processes as large in scale as the carbon cycle (intercepting carbon compounds released directly from plants or removed by sucking arthropods [100]) and the nitrogen cycles (nitrification of ammonium pollutants intercepted by plants [91]; nitrogen fixation [29, 30]) to processes affecting the health of individual plants. Because of the importance of many phyllosphere microbial inhabitants to plant health, there will likely be many practical applications that result from a better understanding of the interactions of microbes with plants and among themselvesQUOTE]

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Microbeman said:

Heady; That is great to know that the roves are not impacted by neem sprays. Also that another grower is testifying success at having a colony form from the purchased strain.

The best way is to bring local rove beetles from outdoors but this is not practical for everyone. Thanks for the description Vortex of the ongoing fluxuations as small patches of pests appear briefly and then disappear.

I really do not think that the microbial populations on the leaf surfaces are as imperative to growth as the soil microbes. However they are important to disease prevention/suppression. The leaf surface itself is important for nutrient assimilation and processing so keeping it non-gunked up is preferable. Perhaps we will learn more shortly about the value of phyllosphere residents. I think the spraying and cleaning of leaf surfaces is a balance which each grower must figure out for themselves.

When we took a harvest we sometimes stripped off a bunch of fan leaves and laid them on the soil for a while to help give bugs a chance to disembark. I would think that a living and non-living mulch will keep most of the good bug colonies happy; certainly roves.

Is it Sea4 who described them as the tigers of the insect world? This is very apt.

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thanks MM!
iirc c4 called them "lions".... either way applies
now you got me curious about collecting live local roves... kind of like making BIM (beneficial indigenous microbes)

good info about cleaning stomata & i totally agree that rhizosphere biology is way more essential than in the phyllosphere especially for plant growth....

milkyjoe said:

Kinda late here. We feed kombucha to the soil, spray with it, drink it...fantastic stuff

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thanks MJ, i do enjoy drinking kombucha, haven't had a scoby in some time to make my own; probably should get that going again

BOMBAYCAT said:

Hey Avi: Is there any chance the soilless has too much Potassium?

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thats a possibility... makes sense because i'm really not seeing any flyers or evidence of big populations of fungus gnats/ root aphids. lots and lots of bugs on my soil surface, but much less flyers than previously.

and altho i didn't add anything specifically for K, it is present in both the down to earth biolive AND the earth juice rainbow mix (2 different companies granular amendment mixes with mycos). I'm not sure if flushing these big pots (25-35 gallons) will help with this, not something i'm apt to do with this organic soil, generally i avoid runoff AND dryout in organic soil.
would flushing help?
the only reason i've let soil dry out is to kill RA/FG's or pre harvest to make moving beds/pots lighter weight.

Tonight i'm topdressing with DE, last jab at the flyers.

Here is a peek into my DIY fertilizer vibes:

^^ i call this little area "fermentation station", one bucket of fermented plant extract (quantum lite & vsc tons of kitchen scraps, eggshells, a whole papaya and pineapple, kashi, em1, lacto, rice hulls, rock dust, panella (solid mollasses basically), one bucket of "canna-kashi" (lots of ganja fan leaves, rootballs, some stems, rice hulls, kelp, alfalfa rockdust, em1, bokashi, lacto, panella, ewc, malted barley quantum lite & vsc), and a bucket of lacto )that i just separated curds from lacto serum last night, ended up with just over 2 gallons of lacto serum), and a solid state fermentation experiment (quantum lite and vsc, ewc, composts, rockdust of gypsum & basalt & glacial, kelp, cytoplus). I need to get on a new batch of cal-phos because i just finished off a bottle made from toasted freshwater clam and crustacean meals and lacto and molasses.


^^ closeup of the "solid state" fermentation i tried out, mostly compost, ewc, and rock dusts fermented about 10 days with molasses and em1 and terraganix bokashi.

session time:

^^ Ox f2 flowers with flo wax and sappy sour waxes spun together

i'm dealing with the same shit right now AVI. Lost a couple clones, but everything else is turning around. Met 52, spinosad, essential oil, done 1 dusting of DE, and will do another. Find it is super important when dealing with pests (infestation) that you stay atop plant health equally as trying to battle bugs.
Got thrips, Fungus gnats and root aphids. All new problems for me. Time to learn!!

Need to get to the shop and grab some BTi.

Kitty has been chewing, but otherwise they look kinda sorta like your picture. I am 2 weeks into flower so I am not going to mess with them. I will feed a little fish/kelp if I feel like they need it. I didn't realize you had 25 gal pots. Should end up with trees there.

c4 called them "lions".... close but no cigar

Microbeman said:

c4 called them "lions".... close but no cigar

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yes... little soil lions... running about as they will, devouring whatever crosses their paths...

BOMBAYCAT said:

I didn't realize you had 25 gal pots. Should end up with trees there.

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another couple/few weeks and might have been there, no choice here, had to flip them.... wondering if i should have crammed them all in one tent, canopy doesn't seem as full and dense as i was hoping after the net go put down (late).

you guys may be recalling my description of rove beetles as tiny "helicopter-equipped jungle cats"

iirc c4 responded that he thinks of them as seahorses. deadly seahorses.


miles---

were those damaged leaves near an intake or an AC or dehuey vent? could be wind burn.

heady blunts said:

were those damaged leaves near an intake or an AC or dehuey vent? could be wind burn.

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nope, a few here and there around the tents, not localized at all.

When I had fungus gnats I also had lower leaves that looked very similar to what you showed. After a small amount of fine Diatomaceous Earth was introduced into my soil, no more fliers. In fact, still none more than a year later, meaning that the DE is well integrated into my recycled/reammended soil and still works. I used a very small amount.

At first i had some worries about the annelids being hurt or even killed by the DE since I had read discussions about that, but my earthworms seem unaffected and I have plenty of young and old earthworms in the soil.

Do be especially careful not to breathe the dust of fine DE. Wear a mask or apply it wet but be cautious.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showpost.php?p=6487962&postcount=385

There it was, although helicopter jungle cats is good

I'm surprised you dug that up... I probably wouldnt have...

and Heady is also correct, as I have said both...

when they're airborne, they certainly do remind me of tiny hungry flying seahorses.

lions, tigers, seahorses, helicopter jungle cats -oh my.....

Locals


They boomed and busted like most new organisms in an environment, but i doubt i could get rid of them now. Even the spinosad didn't kill em all. If you have a worm bin get them established in there and it will be easy. Nice thread!

Are your RAs confirmed? I've had leaf damage like that quite a bit and never could find a root aphid. Have you ran that plant before?

-shrimp

Avinash.miles said:

lions, tigers, seahorses, helicopter jungle cats -oh my.....

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Don't forget my old 1st cavalry - death from above

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKaYOW9zMoY

I love the smell... of the absence of napalm in the morning....

just topcoated all the big pots in bloom with a healthy dose of DE, saw all the flyers and some pill bugs freakin out as soon as it touched them... was a good feeling i must admit. I'm guessing that would fuckup roves also if i went that route after they were introduced?
followed that up with a kelp foliar feed with some aloe & yucca.

emptied the cloner, lots of gluebreath, the ogkb2.0 does't root nearly as readily as the GB or GG4.

I picked up microbe lift bcm...ultra concentrated BTi. 1 drop treats 16.67 Gallon of water...

Avi...whatcha use for cloner?

have the neoprene collars, and 180 degree sprayers, just need a pump and a tote to build a aerocloner.