New grow process?/What to call it?

Well in defense of P4P, this method combined with hempy buckets is a new or at least not very widely used paradigm. There may be many farmers that use such an approach but there is not much information on it in the cannabis community.

grapeman said:

pray4pistils - I am perplexed as to why you would think mixing organics with synthetics is new in any way shape of form. thousands of farmers do this year in and year out and have been doing so since the 1950's or so. I don't think you have "stumbled" onto anything new or original, except for the fact that your thread has brought together proponents of both methods, in a single thread, discussing how you would perform this hybrid type of farming on this crop in particular. Farmers of other crops have been doing this for years. I can give examples galore.

Otherwise, I am enjoying the thread.

Click to expand...

he is right this is not new but the way p4p does it is and hes documenting everything he can for us
so we can all benifit from a whole spectrum of nutes
so not new but not discussed enough to be considerd commen knowledge
so no reason to be a nazi grapes

Heil!

Rednick said:

Heil!

Click to expand...

So why don't we call it the "all natural" method. In the US to label a product "organic" it has to be grown from seeds of unmodified genetics, have no chemical fertilizers (as per the bs OMRI), and no chemical pesticides. But to be labeled "all natural" it just has to be grown from genetically natural stock. But as we all know the label "all natural" is used as an advertising ploy. Call it "All Natural" It will turn the nazi's away as it doesn't have the term "organic" in it. But still describes a hybrid method of growing that can be put in it's own category instead of being pinned on to chemical methods.

This is a great thread pray4pistils. Looks like we have several characters here that have quite a reputation for scientific contributions to this community. I can't wait to see what brews up here.

grapeman said:

pray4pistils - I am perplexed as to why you would think mixing organics with synthetics is new in any way shape of form.

Click to expand...

I don't think it's new at all. It's pretty much uncharted territory in hydro, though. Btw, consider two other things. First is the thread title in which I ask about the process's newness. It's very obvious that organics are mixed with synthetics in modern agriculture more often than not! However, there is very little discussion about actual implementation around here. It's the implementation process that I seek to explore and refine. Secondly, I think my intro verbage sums up my position adequately:
"The principles that underlie my method are nothing new. However, the process and strategy are unique in their focus and intent."

I don't think you have "stumbled" onto anything new or original, except for the fact that your thread has brought together proponents of both methods, in a single thread, discussing how you would perform this hybrid type of farming on this crop in particular.

Click to expand...

Getting organic and synthetic hydro people to agree on almost anything is rare. Collaboration on a grow process that embraces both simultaneously is fresh and exciting as far as I'm concerned! There is such a wedge forcing these camps apart from each other. I actually do suspect that some tremendous value is likely to be found if/when fertile minds cooperate with each other. It's your perogative to disagree, of course.

Otherwise, I am enjoying the thread.

Click to expand...

Right on. Let's share knowledge, ideas, and such.

pray4pistils said:

Getting organic and synthetic hydro people to agree on almost anything is rare. Collaboration on a grow process that embraces both simultaneously is fresh and exciting as far as I'm concerned! There is such a wedge forcing these camps apart from each other. I actually do suspect that some tremendous value is likely to be found if/when fertile minds cooperate with each other. It's your perogative to disagree, of course.


Right on. Let's share knowledge, ideas, and such.

Click to expand...

And that was the nature of my post, and kudos for bringing those two camps together in one discussion.

I see some took my post in the wrong way, glad you did not.
I'll pipe in if I can contribute anything. I've only played at this crop for a year as a hobby, but on a macro scale, I've done this for better then 40 years on many crops, figuring out what works and what doesn't, but never delved into the science of it. Glad to see some of those types here. I've been reading their posts for the last 8 months with interest.

I can tell you from my experience in farming, that using both (organic and synthetic, and even some growth hormones) gets larger, better tasting fruit with higher yield. And I'm sure thats the point here in your thread.

Although I have been reading CTGuys posts for months and have learned a ton from his posts, I will disagree, at least in the crops I grow, that higher brix has been recorded organically. I deal in brix for a living, and in grapes, it is not true that organically grown grapes have a higher brix then non-organic grapes. Organic grapes usually give you organic grapes. Period. But a by product of organically grown grapes is more often then not, less production, with poorer quality. I've seen it year in and year out for decades. Other crops may be different.

I do seem to have a troll following me from post to post though. LOL.

pray4pistils said:

Wow, man. Your experience and processes are nearly identical to mine. Would you please elaborate on the high pH that you saw at the end? Do you believe that the plants suffered? I keep my pH within 5.5 - 6.2 but they tend to stay in the 5.9 - 6.1 most of the time. So far i haven't seen much of a difference regardless. I'm not sure if that's because I'm just not sharp enough to notice or if the organic portion make the whole pH thing less critical (as it clearly does in a fully organic soil grow).

Also, what changes or adjustments have you made as you've varied the proportions of synthetics vs. organics? Have you seen differences in growth, health, or maintenance? I'm wondering if the whole system will work differently in the summer heat that'll be upon us soonish.

Click to expand...

Cheers mate. Yeah we have similar ideas for sure I feel really bad because I kind of read your posts in your avatar's voice, whereas mine would be Barney's voice! I don't put the same attention into growing as you do and mine was stumbling in the dark compared to your meticulously detailed efforts.

I just forgot to ph one day and kind of took it from there. All the teas I make rise very high in ph. It was my 2nd indoor grow and 1st in a new cab with different lights, so I have nothing to compare it to. Looking back I would very much PH it of course (to the low end of the coco ph scale, say 5.5), and I do think they suffered but not as much as if I just mixed hydro nutes to that ph. I agree with the idea that one system is taking up the slack of the other system (synth/org). Sorry I can't contribute more but I simply was not paying attention that closely :

ScrubNinja said:

I kind of read your posts in your avatar's voice, whereas mine would be Barney's voice!

Click to expand...

I read all of pray4pistils posts in the voice of Dr. Fink too lol.

So here is a question; does anyone here have experience using compost or manure teas in a deep water culture system?

I do recirculating deep water cultures almost exclusively. Look at my albums to get some ideas.

Balazar said:

So why don't we call it the "all natural" method. In the US to label a product "organic" it has to be grown from seeds of unmodified genetics, have no chemical fertilizers (as per the bs OMRI), and no chemical pesticides. But to be labeled "all natural" it just has to be grown from genetically natural stock. But as we all know the label "all natural" is used as an advertising ploy. Call it "All Natural" It will turn the nazi's away as it doesn't have the term "organic" in it. But still describes a hybrid method of growing that can be put in it's own category instead of being pinned on to chemical methods.
...

Click to expand...

I like the Natural part of All Natural but I think the All is misleading. So a few based on the theme: "Natural Hydroponics", "Nature Assisted Hydroponics", "Naturoponics", or "Organically supplemented hydroponics".

synthetorganic i vote this

an and a lot of other use a hybrid organic/refined nute scheme, as a lot of other companies do. the goal is to add as many organic inputs into the root zone as possible without detrimental or "slacking effects. but you are taking it to a whole new level of hatthought/application with the specific nute thing for this or that.

ive been growing using a similar "HyNT" formula for a ling time i use AN's Connoisuer with kushie kush organic b, mother earth super tea, great white(stuff was recomended by a AN distributor as a replacement for pirahna, tarantula, and voodoo juice) humic & fulvic, sensizyme, etc and i live it the key to my style is that i DO NOT add all of these things at once and feed (promix hp by the way with 30% big and chunkyt perlite). ill doo the conny and kushie kush and thats it then the mext time ill go with the great white and sensizyme and a little mother earth super tea. the nest time ill go just sensicall bloom and organic-b. and repeat again starting with the conny and kushie, then just a little sensicall the nest time(.16 ec worth which is 2 ml per gallon of ro. also you are very well versed and prficient in you terminology and have a superb baseline knowledge of pretty much alot of the stuff i thought i only knew or cared about and gave thought to when feeding my plants. have we been cloned??lol

great thread prayin4pistils.

sorry for the double post but i agree with what balazar is saying. this method has been around for a long time, EX: in the general hydroponics catalog they market flora nova as

1). "the marriage of hrdoponic and organic ingredients"
2). "extremely easy to use"
3). "outstandeing for all plants"
4). "supberb for hydo, soiless mixes and soil cultivation"
5). "super concentrated and ph stabilized"
6). "optimum nutrient absoprption from natural humic extracts"
" Floranova represents a breakthough in fertilizer technology, as it gives users both the strenght of a dry conncentrate and the ease of a liquid. This unique formulation of highly purified minerals and natural additives combinesthe benifits of hydroponics as well as organic gardening methods. Flora novaone part formulation, combines all the elementsrequired for hydroponic cultivation, plus it is extremely concentrated. a very small amount of floranova mixed with fresh water will provide yo' plants with proper nutrtion. Flora nova works supervly in hydro environments, as well as with both soil-less mixtures and soil grown plants" flora nova must be shaken vigourously before each use due to its high concentration.

and they then go on to give you a feed chart that includes the addition of diamond necter liquid and dry kool blooms, floralicous grow and bloom or floralicious plus, sub culter M and B, chi, and flora shield. so thats a pretty comprehensive hybrid formulation right there all in one neet little schedule(lol).

and then i think of the AN haters ( i AM NOT going to discuss the price or effectiveness of an but i use it but dont want this thread turning nasty like every other thread when someone mentions AN) i am only pointing out that if you look at every single nute company out there they all have a dozen additives and supplemnts recomended in their feed charts just like AN or even more, like humbolt nutrients has quite a bit more.

even the all organic lines like organicar and gh's new line to replace bio bixx stuff.

sorry pistills if ive infringed on the topic of this thread i just wanted to point out that you have great ideas as many nute companies have researched them out and found them succesfull and are actually marketing and selliing these nute systems.

again nice thread and I like the HyNT name for it. organic nazis have their own veiws that are mor idealogical and seem very arrogant, cuzz they balke a the fact cal mag contains calcium carbonate

natural hybrid

couchlockd said:

sorry pistills if ive infringed on the topic of this thread i just wanted to point out that you have great ideas as many nute companies have researched them out and found them succesfull and are actually marketing and selliing these nute systems.

Click to expand...

That's all very valid input, couchlockd. It demonstrates that not only have synthetics and organics been used together but that the industry has already invested in it. That's great for us. I'll stress again that it's the application process or implementation technique that we need to expand on. For instance, I called GH a while back for advice about strategically combining all this stuff. Although I specifically asked about using Subculture + FloraNova, for instance, the feedback was minimal and the advice was inconsistent. Yes, they've got a nifty feed schedule but even they don't know precisely how to implement it.

Responses from several tech reps were akin to reading bullet points from the ad copy that you posted. I asked about pH differences for a hybrid nutrition grow vs. straight chem. I got no straight answer. Questions about how to balance the organics with synthetics went nowhere. Not surprisingly none of them would comment on raw ingredient usage, either. Each tech had a very different and often conflicting answer about how to coordinate organics with refined salts.

To me it's very clear that FloraNova (for instance) combines an ideal blend of substances that support a vigorous microherd. However, there's nothing alive in it. We have to add and then cultivate the living part of the brew. How do we go about this? The organics-only crowd certainly knows how with soil. However, their procedural advice isn't universally applicable in hydro gardens. Thus creating a balanced hydro/food web must done somewhat differently than producing a conventional soil/food web. I suspect that we should rely more on bacterias and less on fungus, for example. It's about this sort of "new" that I'd like this thread to concentrate.

Balazar said:

So here is a question; does anyone here have experience using compost or manure teas in a deep water culture system?

Click to expand...

I started my hydro growing ways with salts + organic teas in a DWC set up, Balazar. However, I didn't stick with it and switched to hempy buckets and then went on to an ebb & gro (bucket) system + reservoir. Considering that DWC is heavily dependent on aeration and cool/clean water, though, I reckon that what I'm doing now is very close in principle to what you've got going on. Do you suspect that utilizing organics in a salt-based DWC set up should be very different than growing in hydroton, etc? If so, why?

***********
P.S. I have a deep/booming voice in real life. I'm always "that guy" that's scolded for speaking too loudly -especially about controversial stuff. Who'd have guessed?

pray4pistils

A couple of things that you might want to include for your experiment and I believe that I've altered them so that it won't interfere with your PH and such.

1. Liquid Silicon

Liquid Silicon provides a good defense against powdery mildew by shifting silicon to the invasion site and building up the defenses by the plant. This article, titled Silicon: The Estranged Medium Element is a study conducted at the University of Florida. There are a plethora of articles on the web about the use of silicon. I recommend Dyna-Gro Pro-TeKt because it contains 3% soluble potash as well as 7.x% silicon because the potash is derived from potassium silicate.

Silicon also acts as a chelating agent as the U of F study showed. For that reason alone it's a good agent to investigate and apply to your plants.

BTW - the Humboldt County's Own Bushmaster 0-0.1-0 product is nothing more than 3% soluble potash as well as their Humboldt County's Own Gravity Flower Hardener 0-.1-0 and the only difference is that it's 4x as expensive. Must be that 'Humboldt County' water that is the reason perhaps?

2. EM-1

EM-1 is a mother culture made up of several lactobacillus strains, including Rhodopseudomonas palustris also known as one of the PNSB (Purple Non-Sulphur Bacteria) and the 'photosynthesis bacteria' which is said to increase a plant's ability to increase the photosynthesis process.

In addition, many growers/farmers/producers use EM-1 as part of their soil soak. I would not advise that you use this product in your teas/watering because it's very acidic - between 3.2 - 3.5 which doesn't matter much in a properly amended organic soil. You'd probably want to apply as a foliar application which is what I do every week or so.

With the EM-1 mother culture you can make what are known as Fermented Plant Extracts (FPE) and bokashi bran, etc.

EM-1 is available at EMAmerica.com and when you receive the EM-1 mother culture, you can extend it by mixing 2 parts EM-1, 2 parts molasses and 20 parts clean non-chlorine water and you let it ferment for several days until you hit the PH numbers I mentioned above.

The rate of usage is 1 tsp. per gallon of water for a foliar application. There are a number of articles 'out there' on why using EM-1 is a viable process for growing plants.

3. Alfalfa Tea

The usual way of making alfalfa tea probably wouldn't work in your experiment but you can certainly take advantage of the ingredients in alfalfa by applying as a foliar spray.

Again - a huge number of articles both here at ICMAG's Organic Soil board as well as the web.

If you can't find organic alfalfa meal from companies like E. B. Stone, Down-To-Earth, et al. then you can go to PetSmart and get the alfalfa cubes - not the pellets. The alfalfa cubes are straight alfalfa hay whereas the pellets are made using molasses as a binder but most of the pellets are not alfalfa but rather Timothy Grass which doesn't contain the main ingredient found in alfalfa - Triacontanol which is a growth stimulator and is said to reduce the internode distance on flowering plants.

Just a couple of thoughts.........................

CC

grapeman said:

And that was the nature of my post, and kudos for bringing those two camps together in one discussion.

I see some took my post in the wrong way, glad you did not.
I'll pipe in if I can contribute anything. I've only played at this crop for a year as a hobby, but on a macro scale, I've done this for better then 40 years on many crops, figuring out what works and what doesn't, but never delved into the science of it. Glad to see some of those types here. I've been reading their posts for the last 8 months with interest.

I can tell you from my experience in farming, that using both (organic and synthetic, and even some growth hormones) gets larger, better tasting fruit with higher yield. And I'm sure thats the point here in your thread.

Although I have been reading CTGuys posts for months and have learned a ton from his posts, I will disagree, at least in the crops I grow, that higher brix has been recorded organically. I deal in brix for a living, and in grapes, it is not true that organically grown grapes have a higher brix then non-organic grapes. Organic grapes usually give you organic grapes. Period. But a by product of organically grown grapes is more often then not, less production, with poorer quality. I've seen it year in and year out for decades. Other crops may be different.

I do seem to have a troll following me from post to post though. LOL.

Click to expand...

Fair enough, it was just a study I read a year ago or so and some feedback I've gotten from people who have transitioned from chems to organics. I'd hardly say it's a concrete fact though, and I'm guessing you have years more of experience in this regard. I wonder if there's ways of doing a better job on the organic side or if the soil needs time to repair after heavy chemical use. I'll concede the brix point, but I still am concerned about health and nutrition. You guys are smoking your harvest, which I assume would exacerbate any potential negative health effects from chems.

Enjoying the thread, especally the posts by CC, keep it up!

CT Guy said:

Fair enough, it was just a study I read a year ago or so and some feedback I've gotten from people who have transitioned from chems to organics. I'd hardly say it's a concrete fact though, and I'm guessing you have years more of experience in this regard. I wonder if there's ways of doing a better job on the organic side or if the soil needs time to repair after heavy chemical use. I'll concede the brix point, but I still am concerned about health and nutrition. You guys are smoking your harvest, which I assume would exacerbate any potential negative health effects from chems.

Enjoying the thread, especally the posts by CC, keep it up!

Click to expand...

Actually CTGuy, I am growing organically and following guys like you and MM, B! & V, to try to learn about this soil sustainability from you guys and I appreciate all your posts. I don't smoke anymore. I'm hoping that if I can learn from you guys, and maybe something I do learn can translate into productive practices on a larger scale. this crop turns around in 2 months and I can control most varibles being indoors.

I think a healthier soil will help the vine/plant carry a larger crop load during heat/weather related spikes. Seems that during those weather spikes is when plants are more susceptible to Botrytis and other pathogens, which is a major cause of losses for us.

So pretty much I am here to learn from you.

grapeman said:

Actually CTGuy, I am growing organically and following guys like you and MM, B! & V, to try to learn about this soil sustainability from you guys and I appreciate all your posts. I don't smoke anymore. I'm hoping that if I can learn from you guys, and maybe something I do learn can translate into productive practices on a larger scale. this crop turns around in 2 months and I can control most varibles being indoors.

I think a healthier soil will help the vine/plant carry a larger crop load during heat/weather related spikes. Seems that during those weather spikes is when plants are more susceptible to Botrytis and other pathogens, which is a major cause of losses for us.

So pretty much I am here to learn from you.

Click to expand...

I learn a lot on this site too. You guys try things that I would never even think to consider, and I think that's important if we want to continue to learn. Who would have thought this much scientific information would be shared on a "stoner site?"

Speaking of Botrytis....any ideas? Just talking to a large scale guy an hour ago that get it inside his buds. Maybe I need to start a new thread for this.

Keep humidity low, keep the air moving, never spray your flowers and inoculate with Si during veg.