[jammie]

i use rainwater from a DIY cistern for my 5 gal DWC. recently i've noticed that even with filtering thru cheesecloth the water is urine color from pollen. when i looked up the chemical composition of pollen and found that its approx 60%lipoprotein to include all the amino acids, 30%carbohydrates of which lactose was predominate, and 2%K. the rest was fiber. i use subcultureB in my system so the microbes should be able to convert this into food. i was looking at the ingredients in advanced nutrients Big bud bloom booster and they were almost identical to pollen. any thoughts on using unfiltered pollen?

For one how are you going to collect enough pollen to make it have an effect on the plants? For another thing you'd need to make the nutrients in the pollen available. I used to work with a company called Allergon AB (pretty sure that's how it's spelled and definitely not Allergan the publicly traded company) out of Sweden. They provide pollen product for the nutritional industry. There are 2 methods for cracking open pollen. One is mechanically like with a ball mill which companies like Cernitin use and the other, which Allergon developed, which uses some type of critical CO2 cracking method.

While an interesting idea to use pollen I do not see it as practical.

[jammie]

hey there yank- trust me, collecting the pollen is not the problem! my roof is covered in pollen and the cistern is connected to a downspout ( will post pic if i have it). the boom 3" of the cistern has the consistency of orange cream soda. the beneficial bacteria that i use in my dwc should be able to convert some of this to usable forms. i'm still keeping my ec @1.4. i'm in week 1 of 12/12. i'm thinking of adding the subculture B directly to my cistern. i'm not sure how long bacterial actions take.

[jammie]

oops- forgot the pic

Originally Posted by jammie

the beneficial bacteria that i use in my dwc should be able to convert some of this to usable forms

That's a guess. pollen granules are actually pretty tough and very hard to process commercially. You won't know until you try but if you're not doing any type of formal testing, I'm talking about lab testing to look at markers like K or amino acids or something like that, to see if the pollen is being broken down don't know how you could really tell if it's working.

[jammie]

i agree that without lab test- who knoz whats happening. the original research was more out of curiosity what pollen was. my ec meter went crazy and wouldn't stabilize on a concentrated amount in the bottom of my cistern, but showed only a weak .1ec on the rest of the water. maybe coming from the K? i've also read a few articles on whether these high p/k bloom boosters have any benefit over regular bloom nutes.. maybe i'll divide my 5or6 (still to be determined) girls into a bloom booster or heavy pollen concentrate test. it sure would be great if some of our microbe expects would drop in with an opinion on how long it would take microbes to break down protein, carbs,ect

[Mr.Meds]

I was actually thinking about this recently. If you could collect pine pollen that may actually have tons of effects. Pine pollen contains all kinds of plant steroids like brassinosteroids etc. As well as tons of other things. Might be able to make a tea out of it and foliar feed them.

[xmobotx]

what's the likelihood you could run a side by side and see for yourself?

i believe you stand a pretty good chance of having it broke down by microbes - that's what they do