plant success soluble

so i just recently switched to organics, i'm using Natures Nectar line of ferts and am supremely happy with my results so far, but that's beside the point.

i am looking to really max out my herd, i was at the grow shop today and the employee got me interested in this stuff "plant success soluble" he said it was made by the same people as great white, but was supposed to work better for soil...i dunno he could be totally talking out of his butt but they were both made by Plant Success, and the "Soluble" one was only 20 bucks for 4 ounces vs 45 on the great white so i went with it.

the label on the back has the exact same description word for word, but it seems to have more mycorhizea by a lot than great white, as well as sea weed extract and humic acid...

so why is it so much cheaper? it seems to be as good or better than great white, yet i can find almost no info out there on it...*edit* i am noticing great white is supposed to be half a scoop per gallon and Soluble is supposed to be a full scoop but could that be it? it still seems to have more good stuff than great white...

has anybody any experience with "Plant Success Soluble"?

https://turf.naturalorganicwarehouse.com/mycorrhizae-mycorrhizal-trichoderma-fertilizer-1 lb

Contains carefully selected mycorrhizal fungus well suited to a variety of soils, climates and plants. In nature, these fungi build a natural microbial system in and on plant roots which greatly enhance plant growth and vigor.
CONTAINS NON PLANT FOOD INGREDIENTS:
20% Humic Acids derived from leonardite (CDFA method)
18% Ascophyllum Nodosum (seaweed extract)
ACTIVE INGREDIENTS:
Mycorrhiza: (approximately 1,975,042 spores per cc)
Ectomycorrhiza / cc:
Pisolithus tinctorious - 750,000 spores per cc
Rhizopogon luteolus - 125,000 spores per cc
Rhizopogon fulvigleba - 125,000 spores per cc
Rhizopogon villosullus - 125,000 spores per cc
Rhizopogon amylopogon - 125,000 spores per cc
Scleroderma citrinum - 156,250 spores per cc
Scleroderma cepa - 156,250 spores per cc
Suillus granulatus - 156,250 spores per cc
Suillus punctatapies - 156,250 spores per cc
Laccaria laccata - 50,000 spores per cc
Laccaria bicolor - 50,000 spores per cc
Endomycorrhiza / cc:
Glomus aggregatum - 8 spores per cc
Glomus Intraradices - 8 spores per cc
Glomus mosseae - 8 spores per cc
Glomus entunicatum - 8 spores per cc
Glomus monosporus - 2 spores per cc
Glomus deserticola - 2 spores per cc
Glomus brasilianum - 2 spores per cc
Glomus clarum - 2 spores per cc
Gigaspora margarita - 2 spores per cc
Beneficial Bacteria - contains 298,469 CFU's per cc of each of the following 11 species:
Bacillus subtillus
Bacillus licheniformis
Bacillus azotoformanas
Bacillus megaterium
Bacillus coagulans
Bacillus pumilius
Paenibacillus polymyxa
Streptomyces griseues
Streptomyces lydicus
Psuedomonas aureofaceans
Psuedomonas fluorescence
Tricoderma:
Tricoderma koningii - 187,500 spores per cc
Tricoderma harzianum - 187,500 spores per cc

"Name: Plant Success Soluble"
"Chemical Description: Mixture of humic, seaweed and yucca extracts; vitamins and beneficial spores."
"------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
"Hazardous Component(s): Approximate%"
"Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) 2%"
"Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) 10%"
"Vitamin E (a-Tocopherol) <1%"
"------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
"Physical/Chemical Characteristics"
"Boiling point: Not applicable"
"Vapor pressure: Not applicable"
"Vapor density: Not applicable"
"Evaporation rate: Not applicable"
"Melting Point: Decomposes>400F"
"Specific Gravity/Density(H20=1): 0.6 (38 lb/cu.ft.)"
"PH: 10%Dispersion-5.0 to 5.5"
"Solubility in Water: Dispersion up to 50%"
"Appearance: Dark gray powder"
"Odor: Slight"


"Name: Great White"
"Chemical Description: Beneficial endomycorrhizal and ectomycorrhizal propagules,"
"beneficial bacteria, trichoderma and vitamins."
"------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
"Hazardous Component(s): Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) <1%"
"Vitamin C (Ascorbic acid) <1% Vitamin E (a-tocopherol) <1%"
"------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
"Physical/Chemical Characteristics"
"Boiling point: Not Applicable"
"Vapor pressure: Not Applicable"
"Vapor density: Not Applicable"
"Evaporation rate: Not Applicable"
"Melting Point: Decomposes>400 F"
"Specific gravity: 0.8"
"PH: 7.0 @ 10% dispersion in water"
"Solubility in water: Insoluble, but suspension with agitation"
"Appearance: White fine powder"
"Odor: Slight ammonia"

And if you live in California:
"Name: Great White"
"Chemical Description: Beneficial endomycorrhizal and ectomycorrhizal propagules,"
"beneficial bacteria and trichoderma"
"------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
"Hazardous Component(s):"
"------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
"Physical/Chemical Characteristics"
"Boiling point: Not Applicable"
"Vapor pressure: Not Applicable"
"Vapor density: Not Applicable"
"Evaporation rate: Not Applicable"
"Melting Point: Decomposes>400 F"
"Specific gravity: 0.8"
"PH: 7.0 @ 10% dispersion in water"
"Solubility in water: Insoluble, but suspension with agitation"
"Appearance: White fine powder"
"Odor: Slight ammonia"


I wouldn't waste anymore money on any of those. I'd rather collect BIM or just mix in some local healthy soil with yours to introduce native organisms.

A few interesting factoids:

*Only two of the mycorrhizal fungi on that laundry list actually associate with cannabis; glomus intraradices and glomus mosseae. That mix contains a total of only 16 spores per cc...

*Trichoderma are faster to germinate than mycorrhizal fungi, and once growing, they actually INHIBIT germination of mycorrhizal fungi. This mix contains Trichoderma at 375,000 spores per cc.

375,000 fast-germinating Trichoderma versus 16 slow-germinating endomycorehizal fungi... Who do you think will win?

so basically soluble mixes with water and the other will only suspend momentarily? i guess that part doesn't matter to me, ive used them both and i always water it out as soon as i mix it in so whether it will stay mixed in over time just doesn't matter to me.

so you are telling me these inoculation products are pointless? i assumed since i was dealing with such a huge amount of little bugs it would have to be better than the little bit that was supposedly in my happy frog, bat guano, and worm castings...

you guys are saying a small amount of local dirt will give me all i need? do they gain in numbers? cause i guess it just seems to me that if each of these little guys adds to the root system, then more could only be better right? or am i missing something? are there better products? why would i want to use local bugs? im in Minnesota, and i would guess that the bugs that live around here are nothing like the organisms that exist where marijuana occurs naturally like near the equator...so why would mine be any better than the kind that comes in a jar?

There is no such thing as "soluble" mycorrhizal fungi; living creatures (or spores thereof) cannot be soluble. That'd be like saying a basket of kittens is soluble... Can the kittens be suspended in water? Yes... But they won't dissolve. Bad example... Hope I didn't offend anyone out there (I actually like cats).

To be soluble, something has to dissolve on a molecular level. Salts are soluble, fungi are not.

"Trichoderma are faster to germinate than mycorrhizal fungi, and once growing, they actually INHIBIT germination of mycorrhizal fungi. This mix contains Trichoderma at 375,000 spores per cc." - Me

What I'm saying is look for a product with only Glomus Intraradices and/or Glomus Mosseae, instead of one hat contains a TINY amount of the fungi that will actually benefit your plants and a GIANT amount of fungi (Trichoderma) that actually prevent those mycorrhizal fungi from germinating.

The label looks good cause it's covered in big numbers, but that's about as far as it goes...

Try using VAM fro BioAg.com. Add ONCE at first transplant and that is it for the duration of the groe. 300 grams for 32.00. Can't beat that with a stick.

J

That's the stuff.

i grow in beds and recycle soil, ive basically been no till for years, even though before i was using hydro nutes in potting soil and only doing it because i didn't feel like tilling...i know it's probably pointless without a herd...

soif i inoculate the hell out of my garden, do they reproduce? do they die at some point? ive been told by experts that salts make them dormant, if that is so does that mean i can expect them never to die? just go dormant when stressed? so if i don't till, and i replant my beds the same day i harvest(as i always do) do they just keep breeding and growing in numbers?

and if most of these little dudes don't actually work together with weed, then wouldn't they theoretically just die? allowing the ones that do to reproduce? i mean these little guys get their food from the roots of the plants they are friends with right? so if there are no roots to feed them how would they stay alive in the soil enough to do anything bad?

Myco's don't do much unless you are going to recycle your soil, or grow full season outdoors. For the typical indoor guy running new soil each time it is a waste of mula.

I have tested many different types with side by sides, and I never ever saw a noticeable benefit .

go with the great white it worked alot better

Just buy straight up glomus intraradices and glomus mosseae if you want them.

Another awesome and free way to do it.

http://buildasoil.com/blogs/news/10157881-how-to-cultivate-and-use-bim

How To Make BIM at home!
Beneficial Indigenous Microorganisms(BIM) is a fermented microbial solution that can be used for many applications around the farm. It is loaded with microbes, and is a cornerstone of Gil’s Natural Farming method. It’s an incredible tool with a myriad of applications, some of which are discussed below.

How to Make:

The idea here is to collect microbes from natural healthy ecosystems. Different areas have different types of microbes in the soil – for example an old growth forest will have microbes that grasslands don’t and vice versa. To get the greatest diversity of microbes, you want to collect them from as many different habitats as you can. For starters, at least get from forest, grassland, and the boundary area between them.

TIP: Plant-specific microbes! If you are growing vegetables, find areas where natural veggies are thriving. If planting ornamentals, look for areas where wild ornamental type plants are. Also, target nitrogen-fixer plants since they have rhizobium bacterial strains present – legumes, as well as some other plant genuses such as Alder or Bayberry fall into this category.


Here’s how to collect microbes and make BIM:

Cook a carbohydrate source to use as the attractant. Rice, barley, wheat, oats, etc should work no problem, most often rice is used here in Asia.
Get a wooden box or perforated plastic box and fill bottom with rice. The rice should not be too deep, around 1 inch usually, otherwise it will take too long for all the rice to become infected. Don’t pack the rice, leave it loose to allow airflow. The whole idea is to create more space for the microbes to infect – the surface area of the rice.
Mark side of box with date and intended location.
Cover box with something that’s breathable – nylons stretched over, or newspaper, just something to keep big critters out – secure with string around top of box.
Dig a little depression in the desired location, a place with undisturbed soil where a healthy population of native microbes is likely to flourish.
TIP: In forest, look for areas where leaves build up and mold. In grassland, look for areas where grass is most thriving.

Place the box in the depression and loosely cover with the dirt and leaves around it.
After 5-10 days (depending on temperature), the first colony of microbes you will notice are white molds. Then different colors like yellow, green, black, etc if you leave it much longer. Generally we harvest when it is in the white mold stage. Disregard rice if black molds have formed on it, this is generally a sign of non-beneficial microbes. In nature when there is plenty of food the beneficial microbes dominate. When there is less food, the opportunistic, non-beneficial microbes tend to dominate.
At this time, remove container from habitat and transfer rice to a plastic container/jar, and mix with sugar
Mix 1:1 with sugar. E.g. 1kg cooked rice with 1kg sugar/molasses(molasses is great and cheap)
Mash up the mixture with gloved fingers until it’s mashed but don’t overmix or you’ll destroy all the mycelia
Cover this mixture for 3-7 days.
When it is quite liquid, add 3 parts water.
TIP: 1kg=1L, so if you start with 1kg cooked rice, you’ll add 1kg sugar and then 6L water to that

Leave this diluted mixture for 7 days. Cover the top with something air permeable just so animals don’t get to it – cheese cloth, nylons, newspaper, etc
You should end up with a mud-like juice. Strain the liquid out of the mixture into a glass jar but don’t seal the top – let it breathe until bubbles in the bottom stop forming.
After you stop seeing bubbles forming in the jar, seal it up
Now you have your microbial inoculant for that ecosystem
Repeat the above steps for each area you are collecting microbes from. The more ecosystems you collect from, the better!
To make the final BIM product, combine all your microbial extracts. To increase efficacy, combine this concoction 1:1 with lacto serum. Lacto is the workhorse and is good to have in combination with other microbes. Now you have created your BIM inoculant!

How to Use:
This is a powerful tool in the natural farming arsenal, with a myriad of applications! It’s a microbial inoculant, so it can be used wherever you are trying to increase/establish populations of microbes – the most basic level of a healthy ecosystem!

Add 1-2tsp per gallon of water.

Plants

Apply as a foliar spray or soil drench. Greatly enhances growth and health of plants by establishing a healthy population of microbes in the soil and on leaf surfaces. Check out the benefits:

Transports food to roots
Builds a healthy ecosystem from the ground up. This is an invaluable job and the greatest benefit of this serum.
Aids disease resistance – fights pathogens, occupies spaces that could otherwise go to harmful bacteria/molds.
Aid composting – massively enhances compost – there will be a whole separate post on this concept
Aid organic fertilizer. Add to your nutrient solution, microbes break down organic nutrients into bio-available forms that plants can utilize directly. Another key feature
Animals

This can be used the same way as lacto, but it is a more diversified solution.

Boost growth by enhancing digestion
Inoculate farmyard (spray ground) where animals occupy to maintain healthy microbial system.
Aids disease resistance. Fight the bad bacteria!
In aquaculture

Add 1L BIM per 700m3 of water containing fish(pond, lake, aquaculture tank, etc). Lacto works in this application also, though not quite as well as BIM(less diversity).

Example: You have a pond that averages 20m wide by 30m long by 2m deep. So, 20 x 30 x 2 = 1200m3. In this case you would add roughly 2L of BIM or Lacto (you can dilute the 2L in a larger amount of non-chlorine water if you want more even application). No need for exact measurements, more or less won’t affect it (to a point obv)


Benefits are built by the microbes:

Microbes digest fish wastes, cleaning up water and improving water quality.
Allows fish to grow larger due to digestive efficiency
Allows higher population of fish in the same amount of water! Literally, increases the carrying capacity of your body of water! This is awesome for aquaculture setups

ok so my question is this:

how does your herd being indigenous to your area help in any way with indoor growing?! i mean pot isn't indigenous to my area so why should i expect my local herd to be one that would benefit my non local crop? a species of plant that evolved thousands of miles away in a totally different climate than mine? seems to me that sure, a local herd might be great for locally acclimated crops but if there are hundreds and thousands of different species of helpful buggies and only a few actually work with weed...well whats to say i have those in my local compost and junk?!?!

since there is no way to quickly and cheaply test this sort of thing, i would think that a person would be better off using a manufactured product with a list of what is inside...at least when growing exotic plants that evolved on the other side of the world...if these herds are really that selective about what plants they work with i would think there would be much less, if any at all of cannabis' preferred bacteria in local soil than in a jar of mixed little helper guys...

im not an expert, ive only been growing organically a little over a month, but ive been growing for a long time and surfing these sites since overgrows heyday, and i guess im just wary of taking advice with no facts to back it up...ESPECIALLY when half the repliers are telling me bennies are a total waste of time, a quarter telling me that my product specifically is a waste of time, and a quarter saying just use product "insert name here"....after reading for years how important mycorhizao are to organic growing im now getting every answer under the sun and they are all conflicting, most don't make sense based on what ive read, and jibe completely with what every company tells me when i email them the same questions...

please excuse me for being weary but you must know these pot sites are chock full of 15 year old posers spouting misinformation at every corner, and about a million sheep gloming on to everything a high post count holder says and repeating it till they die whether it's correct or not...there is a wealth of legit info here too or i wouldn't be a member or bother asking questions, but it really does pay to be wary...

I only hope you use the information I post to do more research.... not to blindly follow.

We are all on the same path, and I also found this stuff weird when i first read it. It all comes full circle though as you delve into the world of microbes and how they support our life and the plants life.

Indigenous simply means free and these experiments are fun too. It's not like we are hoping for some obscure type of microbe.

The BIM are useful because we do know that these microbes are everywhere in the air and we understand how to cultivate the good ones.

People have been fermenting and using microbes forever.

Things that use fermentation that we take for granted are...

Coffee, Chocolate, Bread, Butter, Yogurt, Kefir, Cheese, Wine, Beer, Alcohol, Pickles, Miso, sauerkraut, Poi, borscht, kimchi,

I also thought it was crazy..... but, the only way to know for sure is to do more research for yourself. Checkout gilcarandang.com and also look at Lactobacillus if you want something specific.

As far as Myco products do your own research, here is a good place to start,

http://bugs.bio.usyd.edu.au/learnin...as/Arbuscular/mineralUptake.shtml#AMuptakeOfP

lol trust me i am doing nothing but research, for me one of the most fun things about switching to organic is that you are opening a completely new book on growing...ive spent so many years researching chemical growing that it was beginning to get really boring...organics are infinitely more complex, and infinitely more interesting...

my garden is at an especially needy point in it's life right now, but i plan on finding a few definitive collections on microbe info and delving deep as soon as i find a little more time, i guess i was just wondering how common the microbes that are beneficial to pot are in the wild dirt of most of the US...and i suppose whether there were products that carry mostly only the right microbes...since ive been told basically outright that my plant success soluble and my old great white barely have anything in them that's useful and a ton of stuff that isn't...if there is a product that is much better id like to know about it...

ive been using a lot of the stuff, still... i have been reasoning that even if it is 90% unusable microbes, those ones wont be able to survive without a host plant to feed them. and if the soil is healthy the good ones will multiply right?

i mean these things do multiply right? do they die at some point? the way some people talk about them leads me to think that they are assuming they never die and never breed, but that just doesn't make much sense to me...i mean i read some sites saying ecto's are only good for pine trees and endo's " do not aid in mineralization of organic matter, and thus have not been found to take up organic nutrients" so what does that mean? all these things are bogus?

are there any good books on the subject of microbes that you could recommend? id like to learn about the living herd in depth, and don't want to waste the communities time with all of my dumb questions.

but i plan on finding a few definitive collections on microbe info and delving deep as soon as i find a little more time, i guess i was just wondering how common the microbes that are beneficial to pot are in the wild dirt of most of the US...and i suppose whether there were products that carry mostly only the right microbes...

Click to expand...

A few things that took me awhile to get comfortable with.

#1: Cannabis isn't a special plant to the microbes or to the soil.... only to us. No special nutrients are needed. No boosters or anything at all.

#2: Look at the ingredients of everything and do some independent research. If they won't list the ingredients, don't use it. If they list the ingredients you will find they are mostly of a lower quality than you could source personally.

Everyone of us has to start somewhere, and sometimes the packaged products have a valuable place in the garden, and sometimes they don't. Many of us are critical of every ingredient after learning of the fraud in the industry..... Selling cheap fertilizers with cool pictures on the bottle is BIG money.

Mixing soil is easy after understanding where organics is coming from and also throwing out the idea that the nutrients have to be super special.

Cover the NPK and all micronutrients with a few redundant ingredients for diversity and you are done. Luckily most plant based amendments have almost everything in them already, so everytime you add 1 plant you add a little of everything.

The next step in the game is only adding ingredients that do MORE than 1 thing at a time, then you really increase the bang for the buck.

For instance, we could use Blood Meal for a quick charge of N.

OR... we could use Alfalfa for the fast release and also get triacontanol and a wide range of secondary ingredients. look at the ingredients in this random article http://herbs.lovetoknow.com/Alfalfa_Nutrients

Combine the Alfalfa with some Neem Cake that has Slow Release Nitrogen and will also supress bad bugs in the soil and can also be used to make foliar pesticide sprays.... It's awesome!

So right there we ditched an ingredient that is challenging to understand the source of... unless you slaughter your own animals and collect the blood yourself. Then we replace it with a couple of ingredients that we really can understand the source of... hell we can grow them ourselves depending on where we live.

Apply that proccess to everything that you do and there won't be a magic recipe or anything special that happens, one day you'll just notice that the soil is really alive and is absolutely putting out the healthiest plants you've seen.... keeping it that way really isn't challenging.

Start with Jeff lowenfels Teaming With Microbes because it is a very good foundation to have, then you will be able to do research that makes more sense from there on your own.

TL;DR

There is no one right way to do this. Focus on ingredients not products and also start with reading Jeff Lowenfels Teaming With Microbes.

I purchased something like this in the past for 1 type of mycorrhizae

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mycorrhizae...3856221?pt=US_Hydroponics&hash=item1e68001add

The above link is 1 pound of Glomulus Interadices at 134 grams per spore for $15.00

Compare that to Plant Success Glomus Intraradices - 8 spores per cc

Here is the description they use, sounds like they have been listening to us haha

Endo Mycorrhizal Benefecial Fungi. Highly beneficial soil fungus when applied to plant roots. Once applied, it coexists with the plants roots throughout its entire life. The mycorrhizae actively helps obtain nutrients and moisture from the soil resulting in in faster growth.
6 ounces of mycorrhizae from the species: Glomus intradicces - 134 spores per gram. This specie is the best of the mycorrhizal varieties available.

There are no sources of trichoderma in this product. Trichoderma overtakes other species and doesn't provide any benefits to the plants.

This is a granular product, we recommend using 1 tablespoon per plant during transplant.

134 Spores per gram compared to Xtreme Gardening Mykos 80 Spores per gram.

Click to expand...

...and practically 'set it and forget it' amending afterwards.

i consider myself frugal...that's way a cheat, but as said, they are a weed and need no special care...however amending to attend any vegetable will suffice.

after amendment and populating with mycos be sure to feed them, and i find a solute of fish hydrosolate and molassess sufficeint to that purpose...as well as feeding plant upon application.

the dissolved organic matter in your medium and in that solute will insure populations that your plant cannot avoid and will thrive in.

'course this is just for entertainments sake...

peace, love, and energy to make it all happen.

ok thanks guys, i'm starting to feel much more confident about this whole herd thing...im gonna order the product you linked to soon and toss the plant success myco...