Local materials

Encarsia work well for whitefly,needs a few rounds to get rid of them though.They usually come as a program spaced a week apart for 4 weeks.Good luck getting rid of them,little fuckers can cause total devastation

RandyCalifornia said:

those are worm castings^

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Thanks for confirming, like I said that's what I originally thought they were. I was surprised by how much there is, and how big it is. It makes so much sense to me now that they would call these worm castings, they are like molded clay or something. I guess I'm more used to Earth worm compost? I used to raise red wigglers, I would love to do it again here. Sadly I have only found one person with leaf litter worms, and they are 4 hours away and over priced.

Hookahhead said:

Thanks for confirming, like I said that's what I originally thought they were. I was surprised by how much there is, and how big it is. It makes so much sense to me now that they would call these worm castings, they are like molded clay or something. I guess I'm more used to Earth worm compost? I used to raise red wigglers, I would love to do it again here. Sadly I have only found one person with leaf litter worms, and they are 4 hours away and over priced.

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If you find someone with an abundance of horse manure you will almost surely find red wrigglers.

I collect aged horse manure, as well as pick psychedelic mushrooms. I also do my own composting. I have yet to find any native composting worm a species. On occasion I find Hercules beetle grubs, locals tell me they taste like marshmallows but I've yet to try them haha.



Psilocybe cubensis

Panaeolus cyanescens

hookakead; is the manure piled up? that seems necessary to me. I even found composting worms here in Mexico from a horse farm that never heard of composting worms. same at my isolated farm in Canada.

Yes, I collect from mounds of horse and sheep compost, and I screen the material. I haven't seen any worms. Maybe I should rummage through some fresher material? I have found deep dwelling earthworms while digging in the soil. I'll try to poke around and see what I can find this week, I would be stoked to have those little guys back again!

On the other hand, it's almost impossible NOT to culture black soldier flies here. I see the females all the time. I helped a neighbor start a bin to feed to some chickens and peacocks he raises. They are highly attracted to a bit of moist, fermenting chicken feed.

So I have been doing a lot of reading/research this past week. I decided that I'm going to do a 2 part ferment/compost on the algae. So I went back to the river to collect some more. This time I collected from the right side, but you can see where I collected last week is growing back quickly.



I knew I wanted to collect a lot of material. I had originally cleaned out a 30 gallon trash can, I guess I was dreaming big haha. What I really ended up with was a large feed sack about 2/3 full. I hung the feed sack from a tree so that it could drain some while I worked.



After I finished collecting, the sack was still pretty damn heavy. So I came back to the house and ate lunch, smoked a bowl, screwed around a bit and finally went back to collect my goodies about 3 hours later. The sack was much lighter and not soaking wet, so I threw it on my shoulder and moved to the porch. I had more than a 5 gallon bucket worth, but not enough for the 30 gallon trash can... so I had to improvise a little bit. I took a large, heavy duty trash bag and put it inside another feed sack. I transferred the algae to it. Another reason I wanted the algae to drain out was so that it could absorb more of the 1.5 gallon of lacto/molasses culture I started 3 days ago. It took another gallon of water mixed with more molasses to get the whole thing soaking wet, but without any freestanding water. The idea is to do a very wet, yet still a "solid fermentation".



Then I took an old piece of hose and quickly sanitized it in some bleach solution. This was probably unnecessary, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I twisted the bag around the hose, and zip tied it into place.



The other end of the hose was placed into a bottle of water, making a rudimentary airlock. Sorry about the photo, the sun had set by this time.



The lacto culture I used was already chugging along nicely, and the extra molasses I added should keep them going. This should drop the pH somewhere between 3-4, effectively "pasteurizing" the material. After 10-14 days it should be done. I will then drain and save the liquid. I will mix a large portion of powdered egg shells into the solids. Eggshells are calcium carbonate, and are very good at neutralizing the lactic acid. I have been adding them during my normal lacto ferments as a buffer.

The high acid content should help break down some of the hemi/cellulose in the material, making it easier for fungi or other organisms to digest. I haven't decided whether I am going to do another anerobic ferment with a trichoderma culture, or use traditional thermophillic composting. I would prefer to retain as much nutrients as possible, which is why I didn't start with a traditional green/brown thermophillic compost. Compost is a great soil additive full of microbes, but is very low in nutrients compared to the starting material (most of it off gasses or washes away). I'm open to suggestions, I'm just playing around.

Side note: Research shows the bacteria can produce much more lactic acid in a buffered solution (their own metabolites are no longer hindering them). Using eggshells is a good way to get soluble calcium to your plants, and brings the pH up to around 6... so you're not dumping strong acid directly on your plants. I tend to use more like 1/4 cup of brew per gallon of water instead of 1-2 tbs that is normally called for... without any ill effect.

Absolutely FAR OUT! What marvellous complexities we cannahumans can create!

Hey. Really good you get out in Nature. Peaceful, eh?

Good time to add bio char if you’re using it.

I don't have real biochar, as in purposefully created in a low oxygen environment. I do however have the "charcoal" I posted earlier, which is just the unburnt remains of a normal fire. I don't want to use this in the first step, the ferment. The calcium carbonate from the ashes would counteract some of the lactic acid. In this step I want the pH to drop as low as possible to inhibit/kill off any non LAB microbes. I also believe the acidic treatment will help break down some of the cellulose. If I choose to do a normal thermophillic compost in the second step, biochar would be a good addition.

One of the papers I studied used lacto fermentation on urine. After the activity died down, they mixed the brew with biochar and thermophillicly composted it. The low pH environment inhibited the conversion of urea to ammonia, preserving much more nitrogen as ammonia gasses off easily. The biochar is very good at "holding onto" nutrients, and provides a carbon source for other microbes.

I let pH drop before adding char.
There’s a point where it will “pickle” and that’s when I start adding it. Same idea as your eggshells.
I personally have some fear of the acidic conditions. Possible breeding ground for acid resistant bacteria. Not to throw in unneeded hysteria, but my knowledge drops off at that point.
Currently, I’m basically do the same thing with some yucca blossoms.
Good posts.
Appreciated.

Thanks for the explanation, definitely seems like we're on the same page! The biochar/ashes also has the advantage of adding a little K to the mix too.

As far as creating some sort of super baddie, I'm planning on turning this aerobic and possibly thermophillic at some point. So I think that should help clean things up again. When I was in school we visited a waste treatment facility. They operarated by switching between anaerobic and aerobic conditions. Basically they would let it ferment, then bubble it, stop bubbling, and start bubbling.... each time different organisms would move in to take advantage of the available nutrients. The life/death, and pH swings would cause sediment that would be cleaned out in between each step. Eventually the water has low enough levels that it can be discharged.

@Teddybrae Yeah man it's a good time to get out doors, and I like to get dirty. Human activities generate an over abundance of wasted material, I find great pleasure in taking advantage of that. Every perceived "waste" is a potential future resource, you just have to figure out how to use it. Mother Nature has been doing it for like 4.1 billion years now, essentially she wrote the book.

Well run sewage remediation plants are a great place to learn about microorganisms! Dare I say, better than some courses being offered by 'experts' [at a tremendous cost].

Presently I'm running some 99% anaerobic fermentations in a lighted [for PNSB] homemade incubator. I regulate the temperature to fluctuate from 100 to 104F. I've got several long term batches going for ingestion and had some horticultural batches. It took the incubator about 24 hours to bring up a stable temperature. At a week the horticultural batches were around 3.8 pH, not satisfactory in my book so I put them back in and forgot about checking them until 20 days after start. They finished at 3.40 and 3.35. Perfect in my estimation.

I've never had an issue with acidy fermentations harming plants after diluting in water at around 1:250

Hookahead; You have mentioned culturing Trichoderma fungi and also mentioned previously that the fungi on used coffee grounds are Trichoderma species. How certain are you of this? and do you have a pointer to more information?

BTW, I wiped out one hatch of white flies with a watery extract (tea) of mint, garlic dry chunks and cayenne powder with a couple squirts of Dawn [to stick] Some plants did not like it but it sure worked on the white flies.

Hookahhead said:

@Teddybrae Yeah man it's a good time to get out doors, and I like to get dirty. Human activities generate an over abundance of wasted material, I find great pleasure in taking advantage of that. Every perceived "waste" is a potential future resource, you just have to figure out how to use it. Mother Nature has been doing it for like 4.1 billion years now, essentially she wrote the book.

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Yes! We have a small house and mostly live outdoors in a Eucalypt forest which white man has been burning annually for 200 years. no matter where one digs soil there is char in it. local graziers burn their grass annually and feeble grasses grow on the char as do weeds like Lantana.


So our soil situation is ironic. without savage burning it would not be so fertile. without savage burning there would be more Nature remaining unless you count woody weeds!


Ancient Aussie farewell to you, Sir ... Ooroo!

MM I'm sure you already know trichoderma is possibly the easiest thing to capture/cultivate from the wild. Very easy to get a culture going on a petri. It has dark green mass of spores in the center, and a leading edge of white. Anybody who has done any type of mycology work had learned to dread it. It will grow in the same water/molasses mixture as labs, but I sterilize it by boiling first. A small square from a petri has a shit ton of spores.

I have also seen it growing on damp coffee grounds many many times, both here in the tropics or back in the north. It's one of those things that when you see it you recognize it. I have had success growing lots of trichoderma by taking partially dried used coffee grounds, and sealing them up for a few weeks. However this method is certainly not full proof and could potentially grow some nasty stuff... so I can't recommend it.

Hookahhead said:

The bottom two pictures are of the same thing... they are these "clumps" that are all over the surface of the ground. They are easy to pick up, and stick together fairly well. They feel like they are made from clay. I will powder them and use them sparingly as a mineral powder.

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Where I live those clumps are always next to a hole in the ground. I always heard it was from a crawdad (or krayfish) digging a burrow.
Here's a video that looks similar.
[YOUTUBEIF]https://youtu.be/mxunBFM9XhQ[/YOUTUBEIF]
https://youtu.be/mxunBFM9XhQ

We had crawfish where I grew up, we used to collect them from under rocks. They make great fishing bait for bass.

I noticed a few holes beside my "castings" but nothing as big as in the video. These holes are maybe a pencil in diameter, and not mounded up. I'm fairly convinced the they are deep dwelling Earth worm castings. I'll try to take a picture of them in my hand for size reference, I think they're much smaller than you're thinking... but still impressively large for worm dirt.

I wanted to add I've been messing around with different "traps" for starting LABs. My first few batches I used rice water rinse, but recently I've been playing with water from cooking potatos and pasta. I always salt my water "to taste like the ocean" as many chefs reccomend. So I imagine the higher salt content might make for a more selective environment. I do have access to a scope with a camera on it, along with gram stains. However, I'm not sure I could identify different species present. At best I think I could only quantify what's in there. This hasn't been too important for me, my other methods tell me that it's at least working haha.

Hookahhead said:

MM I'm sure you already know trichoderma is possibly the easiest thing to capture/cultivate from the wild. Very easy to get a culture going on a petri. It has dark green mass of spores in the center, and a leading edge of white. Anybody who has done any type of mycology work had learned to dread it. It will grow in the same water/molasses mixture as labs, but I sterilize it by boiling first. A small square from a petri has a shit ton of spores.

I have also seen it growing on damp coffee grounds many many times, both here in the tropics or back in the north. It's one of those things that when you see it you recognize it. I have had success growing lots of trichoderma by taking partially dried used coffee grounds, and sealing them up for a few weeks. However this method is certainly not full proof and could potentially grow some nasty stuff... so I can't recommend it.

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I know that Trichoderma easily corrupts mycology endeavors but you can really only verify a true culture by very specific morphology via microscopy or by PCR. [or purchase certified spores] The last trichoderma culture I grew was red. I've grown yellow as well. There are many types.






photos from google

Just out of curiosity what do you mean by a true culture? I know that you can obtain specific species and cultivars via a lab. Do you know of look alike species?

Something like this is what I'm familiar with, not my picture.


Perhaps this species isn't even what I'm looking for?

By true culture, I just mean that I know for sure what it is. I grew harzianum and atroviride. I just bought the spores from Koppert and Jenifer McBeath respectively.

When I saw your mention of the coffee ground fungus, I thought maybe you were on to something. I really miss having the spores to activate for control of fungal pathogens. I recently found Koppert in Mexico so I'll try to get some.

Biobest, a predatory insect supplier has opened a location in Guadalajara but they will not sell to me without being a Mexican registered business. Highly stupid. It pisses me off since I had a lot to do with these companies getting a foothold in North America.