Top-feeding only... why I like it.

Infinitesimal said:

I treat it like an outdoor plant and use an amount based on the surface area, just a good spread around, not enough to hurt the plant and if it weren't enough it can always be done again.

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I agree. It comes down to how fast your ladies eat. Stronger light will get them to use nutrient faster. It's hard to tell you exactly what to use and how often. I like to give many organic materials, but in small doses. They all get seabird guano (12-12-5) through veg and up til mid flower. Then I switch to a combination of guanos that give me a mean NPK value of about 6-10-10. In late flower they get no significant nitrogen. Then they finish with no nutrient until they are sufficiently starved for a clean harvest.

All the while, however, they get random additions of bone meal, fish meal, kelp meal, etc... And in very small doses.

This has me baffled. You are getting more than triple the yield I am seeing per plant. With a fraction of the soil.

Judging by the size of the trunk on the ECSD in post #7, that plant has to be extremely root bound. How often are these plants being watered? Hence the need for the tray...

I wouldn't have believed it without the pics. Even still, I'm like WTF?

marlo,

seriously... those are some coco hydro looking yields... my friends who swear by bottled nutes and can't believe organic can yield as good as hydro with better quality need to see these pics and more like them!

Root bound, shmoot bound! I had a friend yield 16 ounces from 4x4 rockwool cube, drip-fed... All roots contained within that one, small cube. If the roots never go too dry, and never stay too wet for too long, and the pH never gets too far from ideal, and there's never a lack of nutrients, and there's never too much nutrient, and the humidity never goes too far up or down... what's really stopping them from expressing their full potential? Being root bound DOES affect plants, but obviously not as much as folks believe. It's all about 24/7 consistency. Being "in the game" mentally helps, also. Always remembering what each plant received for nutes last week, and making sure you read the signs the plants are sending you about what they need, and in which direction they are moving, nutritionally.

Great thread CC, I have been considering using Blumats and think this would be a good method to incorporate with them. Maybe a few hand waters a week to release the nutrients into the soil. Your always a wealth of knowledge cheers mate. Kit

Crazy Composer said:

If the roots never go too dry, and never stay too wet for too long

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How do you go about accomplishing this without having to pick up/weigh the plant? Just curious as I am a very inexperienced soil grower.

paperchaser, kick em when they're up, kick em when they're down! I kick the containers and try to tip them. I do this gently, obviously, and it's more of a slow tipping with the toe than a "kick".

Toe tip them right after a full watering, remember how heavy that feels. Then tow tip em when you know they're dry. Remember how light that feels. Then use your brain to calculate accordingly.

I PREFER to have my 3 gallon girls needing water (in flower stage) every 24 hours. 10 gallon containers should be no more than 3 days, usually every 2 days, if the plant is of sufficient size and health, and has ample lighting. Damn, I never realize how many caveats and considerations are involved until I try to explain it! Seems simple to me in my head, then I explain it and realize there are some things that just can't be generalized, you know? Just make them as happy as they can possibly be, and pay attention to each day's conditions as they compare to the day before's conditions. Watch for any new spots, yellowing, greening, burnt leaf tips, any other stress, and compare to the day before, three days before, a week before, etc. It's about noticing tendencies, noticing trends, then diagnosing them and administering a fix to cut the trend off at the pass. Decide to be fucking excellent! Think about their direction while driving your car. Think about the trends you've been noticing in them as you sit on the toilet. Imagine the current trend continuing, and understand what that will look like in a few days/a week from now. And most importantly... when you know you need to act on something, do it! The biggest killer of cannabis plants/reducer of quality and yield is laziness and procrastination, whether admitted or not. Laziness in the thought process involved, and procrastination in the actions required to excel. "You reap what you sow"... one of the great truths of human history.

Did I just rant?

your results speak for themselves, CC ! you obviously make this method work for you very well.
I'm guessing the concentration of feeding roots at the surface negates the lack of efficiency of root binding at the horizon between the pot and the plant down below.

out of interest does the medium you use have a high proportion of coco?

VG

dank.frank said:

CC - The few times I have tried top feeding like this - especially with guanos - I found I had issues with puddling and uneven drainage into the soil...

I'm assuming you scratch things into the surface to prevent this? If so, how deeply, and do you find this disturbs the roots?

Also - this would make me assume you add NOTHING as far as amendments being fully mixed into the medium? Along those lines - what is your base medium?

Thanks for sharing, CC - you've always posted plants with impressive yields!



dank.Frank

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hey frank,

I thought I would reply to your question a little more specifically...

I too had issues with drainage, I'm a sucker for some nice fast draining soil that still holds enough moisture, except for this last run I didn't have any issues...

the EWC with its humic content is what made the biggest difference, I mixed it at roughly between 60/40 guano to EWC to 50/50... its the clay content in the guano that causes the problem at the surface of the container, here is a link with a bunch of info on humics and there is a part all about how they work with clays and water penetration.... http://www.multimikro.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=212&Itemid=337

but I did gently work it in by scratching the surface a little bit when spreading the guano and EWC around the container, probably just a few centimeters maybe a 1/4 inch just enough to break up the surface and expose the soil underneath to the raw fertilizers, I never feel any of even the tinniest of roots. With no more damage to the surface than what would be caused by wind and water erosion outdoors in nature

this last time was the best results I have gotten from using this fertilization method, but still pretty half assed in my opinion... I needed more balanced inputs and I just need practice time with strains/specific amendments.

"2013 Good Vibes" over vegged, under pruned, in a 5 gallon bucket filled with a mix of FFOF and happy from top dressed with seabird guano, indonesian and jamaican bat guano and watered with molasses and some enzymes from time to time. the yield was about 5-6 ounces not great but this isn't a heavy yielder either.

EWC... I forgot to mention that my compost is mixed with EWC also. I'd NEVER grow organically without Worm Castings. The fact that I've been buying a compost that is mixed with EWC got me to forget to mention EWC as an individual component.

Ya, Verdant, there is coco in this mix... But I see the same results with any well-built soil, coco or no. Yes, the roots DO mat up pretty thick right there at the surface of the soil. Here's my thinking... In nature, MACRO nutrient sources (bird shit, dead bugs, composting leaves, etc) generally fall on the surface of the soul and then are accessed by the roots from there. The method I employ simply emulates this natural process.

So would you say that had you mixed all the same ingredients, guanos /kelp/ ewc /compost etc etc in one batch in the beginning it wouldn't perform with the same results? That indeed top dressing is fully responsible for plants of this size?

I'm about to mix 9 cf today and it would be helpful to not have to mix all the amendments in from the get go. I know you said your medium changes, but have you ever started with a base mix that was just promix(any peat moss) ewc, perlite. Or have you always had some light amount of amendments?

Not to take away from your method, but it seems it is highly dependent on skill. More of a chef intuition.
I did top dress with some guano and ewc yesterday, thanks for making this thread it was perfect timing for me.

You know, corspsie, you are correct. But it's really not that hard. If you know which organic matter releases which nutrients, and you know what nutrients are needed by the plants at what stages of growth, then all you need to do is do what you know needs doin'.

As for your soil mixing... Here's my own theory on that: A soil built to be very rich will take ALL control away from the farmer. The only time this is good (IMO) is when that soil is guaranteed to be mixed with the PERFECT amount of every nutrient, and the PERFECT amount to make sure there is no significant amount still releasing to the plants by harvest time. My goal is to ensure the soil is starving for input by harvest time. The ONLY way I know to be organic AND ensure this starving soil by harvest time is: top-feeding.

So, if you wanted to do this top-feeding method, you'll want to build an organic soil with all the good stuff a soil needs, like compost, EWC, various meals, greensand, etc. When I build a soil for top-feeding, I build everything into the soil in LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT amounts, with the intent to replace the depleting soil nutrition via top-feeding. The initial soil is meant to be a warm, cozy home for beneficial fungi and bacteria. Make sure the soil is EXTRA-well draining, because the top-feeding WILL slow the water drainage. Starting with a poor-draining soil, then top-feeding will lead to EXTREMELY poor drainage.

and to add to that, there is a limit to how much you can add to the soil in the beginning both to ensure happy microbial life but also just the sheer volume and ratios of nutes can be to high for the plants to be happy especially in varieties that are nute sensitive.

so the total amount of inputs the plant needs throughout its life cycle very well might exceed what it could handle being planted directly into... if that makes any sense, for instance people who use the super soil method, depending on their plant to pot size they may have to add top dressing or bottled inputs to finish the plant but couldn't pre load the soil with any more additives for it being to "hot/charged" already.

Well Thats great. My last batch of soil and most current crop was accidentally made to be 1\4 the amendments I had planned, I was pretty mad at myself for the mistake. But now it seems I can make it work for me. And with this next mix I can do the same and go light. Thanks , I'll see what I end up with.

As an extreme example, I've seen healthy plants grown in LITERALLY straight chicken manure. Poorly composted, dry hunks, etc. The smell of the terpenes were AMAZING! It was a room full of Sweet Pink Grapefruit, and the room smelled EXACTLY like a warm warehouse stacked to the rafters with fresh grapefruit boxes. Amazing. But, the smoke was harsh. The plants showed some signs of pH flux, but overall the plants were surprisingly happy being is straight up chicken shit! The experiment taught me a lot! Actually, this was many years ago... when the dude told me he used straight chicken shit, I was ready to watch them curl and die! But that didn't happen. So surprised. We learn the best lessons from witnessing extreme examples like this.

At the other extreme of my plant growing experiences was the time I threw a single Sharon White Widow clone in some sandy soil, between two groves of White Pines. I gave her ZERO ANYTHING! I came back in the autumn and found that she had barely grown. I got about 1/4 oz from her. But let me tell ya somethin', that was THE BEST smoke I've EVER had in my life. Tasted like pine, burnt better than a dream, and the stone was off the charts, from my own experiences anyway.

So, the two examples, both polar opposites, can be seen as one understanding of nutrition and the effects on both growth potential and smoke quality. For me, I grow weed to smoke it, not to weigh it. However, it has always been my quest to be equally impressed by both the weight AND the smoking experience of indoor, organically-grown cannabis... This is my Holy Grail of indoor cannabis growing, and of course, I'm still looking for better polishes to use on that Grail, to get it to shine ever brighter. Always searching. Always looking for opportunities to identify that my current ideas are flawed, so I can move upward from those understandings. I LOVE being wrong! It means a new opportunity to know better has just showed itself. Ego and pride ARE deadly sins after all! Deadly to one's personal evolution. They stagnate a person, lock them into inferior understandings.

Very impressed and happy to see these results. Going to be trying something similar but with bigger containers. Basically thinking about making a big home for roots and raining down nutrients and organic matter endlessly. My soil mixes tend to be on the heavy side of feeding and I want to find a way to dial in what the plant needs. This goes against a few books that say the plant picks what it needs through executes etc. But I basically want to find the perfect balance of never starving the plant through its container while feeding it as much as it can take through its feeder roots on the top level. Do earthworms eat feeder roots? I have so much activity with the bare eye in my soil, I always wonder if there could be bad stuff in there. But I feel like the good guys win the battle when given enough support. Such a scattered reply but it's been a long day.

I use this method too. for outdoor only at this point, as neem / chicken crap and sorts don't smell good for first week indoor..

I love using things like neem, oyster shell, lime of course, and whatever I have laying around.. kelp, gypsum, rock dust, chicken poop, bagged "organic mix" , bone meal... ...


thanks for sharing as this is truly a wonderful, easy, simple method... I'm not a brew and clean up guy, measure this precisely or that... simple, easy, done.

I also like outdoor for the fact you can spill and make a mess, as indoor is a little more neat and clean ( or that's how I like my setups )



I have noticed with this though, as you mentioned your method of watering first in, I notice rock dusts like say azomite can clump if you don't spread it around and as you said a watering method, which I really can't describe, but involves two waterings also to get it into the media.. also I noticed never add in and not water.. it tends to clump also as I've done that where plants get watered this day or that, and if I add in and leave, the next day it clumps, so best to add and water right after I've noticed fro best results.. as if you don't you can find big clumps which will not degrade anytime fast, but will be fine if reusing media and mixing as it will get mixed into the middle or say into next planting to be broken down better then the top surface... well let' keep it simple as you say, throw some shit on top, water in and watch grow!


Thanks

I have a couple huge garbage cans filled with Subcool's super soil (I know, I know. I'm a beginner. I had to start somewhere.) that has been "cooking" for quite a long time. I've been reading that layering it on the bottom is not the best way to go about it. Do you think this could be used as a top dress? Maybe if I dilute it with some non-amended soil? I can post the exact recipe I used if it would help answer any questions. Thanks!

yeah you should be able to use it as a top dressing... depending on how much N is in it, you may want to cut it with some neutral and high P and K inputs... especially for half way through flower and beyond... or you may just want to only use it half way through then switch to other inputs (the high N is all, I think, you would have to worry about)

CC,

On a 10 week strain, when do you stop top dressing with guanos and ewc?