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Plants with similar needs?

f-e

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I have taken a few core samples from the ground, which I will be sending for analysis soon. The lab doing the testing have asked a few questions I don't have to answer, but they seem of use. They would like to know the last crop and next crop. From this they can tell me what amendments I should be making. Based on RB209 recommendations.

This is all entirely new to me. For years I have just turned over the ground, adding composts known to work, and foliar feeding throughout the season. Working out the amendments myself is going to be a winters work. If they can do it, that would be great. Or perhaps if they can get me close so I just need to tailor things a little, that would save me a lot of bother.

What I'm asking, is should I say I'm doing corn perhaps? Tomato's seems a great idea, but do they even grow them in the ground? I'm in the UK but some samples are field and some my own garden, so I can get a little creative, but not bananas or coconuts. Green-house plants are within reason though.

I have about a dozen samples to send, so a few suggestions would be very useful. Maize and grasses are common in this clay area of mine.

Any ideas what I can tell them I want to grow?

If I don't get any reply's then this might become a science thread :)
 

MJPassion

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Tell em your making new beds where WEEDS have been growing previously.

Next crop is technically irrelevant, imo, as all you need at this point is a baseline to work from & a goal of Albricht (or whatever it is you study) style remineralization.
 

f-e

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I want to know what plants have similar needs, so I don't have to work it all out myself.

I have looked at companion planting which gives an idea of compatible plants, but the companions are never destined to be a crop themselves. Generally they are beneficial to the cannabis plant, rather than being competition winners themselves. Like plants that could work in rotation. They're quite different.

I imagine I will just say maize if nobody has any ideas. I'm too busy to start a university course worth of reading for such a small project. I did start learning about it, but I'm really stupid. I know this, because I used to be a lot more intelligent. I took on a load about base saturation, but my labs don't do that anymore. I don't know which way to turn. It's only for some percy though, so I can't spend all winter not going to work so I can do this.


I often find people don't know what I'm talking about, so will say again. I want to know what grows well along side cannabis in the same ground.

Thank you
 

f-e

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Tomatoes are similar to Cannabis.

Thanks for the prompt. As I said before, I wasn't sure. So I had a look. We do field plant them, for paste and such. I bet we can't get much closer than that.

So I have toms, and corn. I can't just have two things though, due to how I'm representing myself. I'm too far north for toms really, but I don't have to look like I know what I'm doing.

I'm feeling a lot happier now :) Thank you
 

f-e

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Quinola is meant to be similar (some sort of grain)
Strawberries? seems unlikely, but I need to look at it.
Hops, which I should of thought of before.
Hackberries, but I'm a little far north in the UK.

Maize is looking like a poor match, but I have seen a good maize field treated with bonemeal with outstanding results. I need to look at field requirements for both, but what are the field requirements for cannabis? I have not seen it published, so could never even start to adjust to ground myself.
 

Betterhaff

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...but what are the field requirements for cannabis? I have not seen it published, so could never even start to adjust to ground myself.
Search soil requirements or conditions for hemp. It’s legally cultivated in certain parts of the world. Not exactly the same as drug cannabis but it is the same species (or maybe sub-species).
 

farmerlion

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Hops are genetically close to cannabis. If your amending the soil now and it's working well, keep doing so. I have used a post hole digger for some outdoor plants. Then filled in the holes with certain amendments. If your not doing to many holes it works well. Take some soil Ph readings and find out if your acidic or alkaline? Test kits are very inexpensive and will let you know in just minutes what you need to do. Check the Ph of your water source as well. I haul lake water from a nearby lake as my well water is very high alkalinity. I wish you well. Peace
 
no matter what crop you are planting, you should lay down a 3'-5' thick layer of woodchips or mulch on the bed. it will drastically increase water retention and microbial activity. it really seems to work. theres a guy on you tube and he runs an all organic veg farm and he doesn't ammend the soil at all. just uses woodchips and soil biology. i would definitely say you should ammend your soil though. then do the wood chip mulch. i think it would be bulletproof. i recommend checking out the youtube videos too. incredible info. he calls himself organic gardening.
 

f-e

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Search soil requirements or conditions for hemp. It’s legally cultivated in certain parts of the world. Not exactly the same as drug cannabis but it is the same species (or maybe sub-species).

I have found hemp and flax (I must look up flax) to be grown mainly for fiber. Though some articles have spoke of oil and seed, and even drugs use. In detail enough to be able to tip the cbd cbn thc ratio's. Though it seemed they knew what they were on about, the only info I could see was repeatedly saying most drugs production was about using a well known 15-30-30 fertiliser, that I can't fathom out. It would be nice to know, but I'm still on soil amendments right now. I will keep looking, but have been doing for some time.

Thank you for the reply
 

f-e

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Hops are genetically close to cannabis. If your amending the soil now and it's working well, keep doing so. I have used a post hole digger for some outdoor plants. Then filled in the holes with certain amendments. If your not doing to many holes it works well. Take some soil Ph readings and find out if your acidic or alkaline? Test kits are very inexpensive and will let you know in just minutes what you need to do. Check the Ph of your water source as well. I haul lake water from a nearby lake as my well water is very high alkalinity. I wish you well. Peace

Hops should be good then, but I have never seen it locally. I'm in the middle of the UK. Does it like rain? If it does, we can grow it.

I don't water. I will spray them, but only water them if it's dry when they are first put out. Having started them indoors. It's never sandy ground. Mostly clay. If somewhere is dry, I walk away. I guess I'm lucky. Though some loam for once would be nice.

I dig about 18" square, 6" deep. Putting in about 10L of compost and a little blood fish and bone, with a sprinkle of K. Then feed by spraying, according to needs. I top dressed many times, but it just sits going mouldy, so I don't bother. It would be good to correct the soil enough to just skip all that digging and carrying, and be able to just open up a small hole with a couple of handfuls of compost, just to seat them.

Thank you for the input


Oh.. betterhaff. I did read that 3g of P and 3g of K, per meter, would need putting back after hemp is grown (I worked out the area from the hectare amount, so nobody should blindly copy)
 

f-e

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no matter what crop you are planting, you should lay down a 3'-5' thick layer of woodchips or mulch on the bed. it will drastically increase water retention and microbial activity. it really seems to work. theres a guy on you tube and he runs an all organic veg farm and he doesn't ammend the soil at all. just uses woodchips and soil biology. i would definitely say you should ammend your soil though. then do the wood chip mulch. i think it would be bulletproof. i recommend checking out the youtube videos too. incredible info. he calls himself organic gardening.


I have used some beneficial lifeforms, but never really saw results. Watered in with seaweed extracts, the result was that seen from just using the seaweed stuff (maxicrop is my usual choice, as it's cold pressed).

I have a plot that's easily 5 times better than others. Plants in the ground there, do better than breaking my back elsewhere. It could be a lesson that god knows best. A youtube showing it's better to do nothing would certainly get believers. I'm a man of science though. I want control of what is happening. I keep records of what I did, when and with what results. It's this science aspect of growing them that I'm trying to step up. I would say by a notch, by this is a very high jump from reading bottles at the garden center.

I'm really not into the voodoo methods of growing. I do add some ground cover and certainly the micro-herd are at work. I don't know who they are though or their levels of population. I have to sample the ground to just see how good a job they're doing, with what they have. To assist them. With large helpings of stuff that likely decimate their populations :ying:
 

djonkoman

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hops isn't really a usefull comparison I think. sure, it's genetically close, but in this case the only thing that matters is nutrient requirements.

cannabis is a fastgrowing annual(hops is a perennial) that can get quite big, so you can assume they use quite a lot of N. maize seems like an obvious comparison, also an annual that makes quirte a lot of mass within that one year.

another obvious comparison would be hemp.
you would find numbers for fiber and for seeds/oil probably. hempseeds contain a lot of protein, which contain N, so growing a plant the same size etc an unfertilized plant will have lower N needs.
so likely the number for fiber is more accurate as for seed/oil.

I found a link(https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/production/hemp-production.html) which says springwheat is used as comparison(for hemp). it also list some numbers("89 to 135 kg/ha nitrogen, 45 kg/ha phosphorus, 67 kg/ha potassium and 17 kg/ha sulfur.", I think those numbers are only for the start of the season, since it then goes on to describe what's removed, and the N removed is higher as 135 kg/ha)
 
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f-e

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Thank you. That is very useful. I will go and look up spring wheat right away, to see when it's planted out, and that we do it here. I have a few analogues now, which was my purpose for posting, and this idea of good ground condition. I can hopefully stick with future crop details so they can offer ideas of what sources the I should use with ph outcome in mind. It will be great to cross reference what everyone says though to find some common ground and record another seasons results. Hopefully much better results! :)
 

f-e

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Well after all that, only Spring Wheat and Forage Maize were listed as choices. I got my results back some time ago though, and in a few cases they said to do nothing. On land I know is going downhill each year, so could do with something. I have little idea what though, as hundreds of pages on, I'm still yet to find some targets. It seems quite American here, with a strong emphasis towards the ratio of stuff. Which here in the UK is viewed as outdated. It wasn't even reported. I have available levels of P K and Mg as my main result. Plus Sodium, Calcium and estimated CEC as extra's I asked for. Along with PH and lime recommendations. I can ignore that though I think, as they want to raise anything below 6.5 and only my worst sites are over 6.5 with under 5 recorded at one of my better locations.

I actually have 3 samples from one site. A site that gets worse as we move across it. The results show the ph goes up from around 6 to around 7.5 in hand with sodium levels dropping. Sodium being a ph lowering substance that seems to have little effect with most crops. Leaving just the PH increase as the likely cause of poor plants there.


Still... on this huge site of industry experts, where are the targets hiding? Either as actual values or just index's
 

f-e

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Okay, this UK based report..
I'm going to talk about just one site, they think will be used for spring wheat. I have P @ index 3, K @ index 4 and Mg @ index 4.

Index?
Looking at P, index 3 means between 26&45 mg/l (or 26&45 ppm by my math). This index business is just grouping. Index 4 would be 46-70 mg/l and a group 5 71-100 mg/l

My K index of 4 means between 401 & 600 mg/l and my Mg index 4 is 176-250 mg/l


I also have the exact numbers, P=32mg/l K=545mg/l and Mg=233mg/l but perhaps such accuracy isn't ideal, as chucking down handfuls of dust will never get things right to the milligram, and also a samples just inches apart will give slightly different results anyway. So, grouping or indexing seems logical enough.

Now, Defra say grassland and arable crops are unlikely to see any gains going past index 2 and no gains at all past index 3. Vegetable crops will possibly gain past index 3, unlikely to gain past 4 and will see no gain passing 5.

My 3 4 4 site for spring wheat requires no correction (for spring wheat)
I also had Calcium looked at, and sodium, with a cec guestimate. They don't do calcium in a standard test, which looking at other threads, is in the top 3 of importance. Getting some ratio right that in the UK we moved away from decades ago. Leaving me somewhat out in the cold. Results.. Sodium rated as deficient with around 10mg/l but calcium on target around 1500 mg/l (for spring wheat)

I had PH checked and it's over 7 making this site great, for the wrong crop.


I'm leaning towards the idea of making everything index 5.
P 71-100 ppm
K 601-900 ppm
Mg 251-350 ppm

I may revisit this ratio idea to see if that suggests a Calcium level.
I have one site with a target sodium level, reported as about 50mg/l. Reports say most plants don't care much about sodium, but iirc cannabis does. I think I'm going to aim around 60mg/l which is a bit high for the field crops I said I was doing.

I'm really running out of time now, and seem to need a whole load of elements. 10kg of calcium, a kg of P and 6kg of K and 700g of sulfur. I have to get these from packets at the garden center, which will contain other things. So some real synergy between my choices is required. Which is very off-putting... I need to spend some real time on this


Sorry for the delay since my last post. Anti-virus issues blocking my encrypted browser traffic. Ive had to uninstall the lot to say hello.

Hello! :)
 

f-e

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Damn onion's had me crying for months, but finally it's working again.

I'm not aiming for index 5 now. It would mean correcting almost everything everywhere, and a glance at a CF Truncheon for reference tells me it's way higher than I need. I'm going to index 4 as lots of my values are already there. Then come fall I will sample again and see how wrong I got it.

These mg/l numbers are no good to me. I need to know what going on per meter. So how many Liters are in a meter? Well two sampling depths are common, and I chose the deeper of them, at 150mm. So quick tot on the calc tells me 150L exist in a meter if I correct to that 150mm depth. Which is about my fork, so I will go with that, knowing my plots allow for that depth.

I have a P value at one location of 30mg/l and would like to see that come out of group 3 into group 4 at about 60mg/l. So, I take my 0.03g and times it by 150 to see my meter has 45g of P in it. Which I want to double. So that's easy enough. Perhaps.

Looking around, it seems bonemeal is around 3-9-0 so 10% P of some sort. I'm looking for 45g of P so need about 450g of bonemeal. Per meter. I can do that!

Potash seems useful with it's 0-0-50 as it targets K and seemingly little else.

Epson salts are pretty much just mg.

Dolomite lime also adds mg, and about 6 times more calcium. While lifting PH.

It's all these amendments that are troubling. Building a list of what contains what, and it what form, to see if it's useful. Dolomite lime is about 50% calcium and 25% Magnesium, but only half is available. Another liming supplement lists Calcium at 40% but what sort I don't know.

So, I think I have the math pinned down, and I'm going ahead, but some of what I have off the shelf is a little unclear. Hence I will aim for index 4 and then sample again in a few months time. I gotta teach myself. Though I'm all ears and people around here do look like they get it.

One things for sure, it's a lot less to carry, once you know exactly what's needed, rather than dragging bags of compost about all night.
 

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