G
Guest
That's a lot of science for a cake mixer - my opinion is another piece of junk to sell the opportunity being seen.
Organic Fanatic Collective
- Thread starter Suby
- Start date
im a bit high and kind of lost from your post? no go or what?
heres a small homemade one for compost tea tests or small batches or something.
http://brewiki.org/StirPlate
heres a small homemade one for compost tea tests or small batches or something.
http://brewiki.org/StirPlate
Scay Beez
Active member
jaykush: The method of aeration is one of the most important aspects of designing a compost tea brewer. A mixer or blender style aeration will destroy fungi. It's like the soilsoup brewer, it will brew a great bacterial tea but not a balanced one. Air pump or regenerative blowers are the way to go. The word magnetic always scares me because that means it could tie up heavy metals or change polarity.
- sbz
- sbz
yea i know, i have all kinda of brewers just for fun and they all work good in there own ways. air pumps, water pumps, waterfalls and im going to try this for the hell of it. i dont think it will destroy fungi so to say more like stop them from growing bigger and not stopping them from multiplying, then in the soil they do the growing. my water pump brewer runs through a machine sort of and i have no noticable reduced fungi activity as i see mushrooms popping up everywhere i apply and the plants LOVE it. you should have seen the 6 inch+ mushie that came from below the bamboo a few weeks ago. i collected some spores to add to some soil tests.
the word magnetic make me think, i dont see it as a bad thing, i dont see it as good thing either as of yet. i know a friend who used to magnetize his water in some way i forgot so when he foliar sprayed it increase efficiency because the water droplets will attract to the plants magnetism.
ive already started making one as i have all the stuff around the place, works good from early tests.
plus im friggin high today haha this is the fanatic thread right.
Scay Beez
Active member
This is a much better way to word it. It is possible to shred a mushroom mycelium culture to small pieces and they will continue to grow.
A local grow store in town sells some paramagnetic rock dust but I haven't tried it yet. Soil is said to be more productive if it has a stronger magnetic force. A lot of the biodynamic brewers mix the water in certain directions a certain number of times to energize the water in different ways.
Not at all trying to discourage ya just pass some info from the experts. Experiment on!
- sbz
well we need some more stuff or something heres some quickies
Mycorrhizal Fungi pictures
http://plantbio.berkeley.edu/~bruns/tour/fungi2.html
Mycorrhizas and Symbiosis
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag...roscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjan01/symbiosis.html
Mycorrhizal Fungi pictures
http://plantbio.berkeley.edu/~bruns/tour/fungi2.html
Mycorrhizas and Symbiosis
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag...roscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjan01/symbiosis.html
sophisto
Member
Found some interesting info on the beloved PM
Found some interesting info on the beloved PM
Well after battling with Pm this last go round I decided that in the future using compot teas to suppress the issue before it arrives is the better alternative. If in some event they were ineffective I found a product on line that is basically a bio-fungicide that has beneficial micro life inside to colonize leaf tissue and feed on Pm....Intersting stuff it's called AQ 10...
AQ10 mildew control biofungicide tested.
From: Wines & Vines | Date: 4/1/1997 | Author: Goble, Ron
Print Digg del.icio.us
California grape growers have a new material to use that effectively controls powdery mildew. AQ10[TM] Biofungicide from Ecogen Inc. expands the arsenal available to the industry and will help stretch the lifespan of the existing material as well, says Doug Gubler, University of California Extension Plant Pathologist at Davis. Dr. Gubler, and independent vineyard consultant Corky Roche of Salinas, have been working with the material extensively over the past five years and have learned some crucial things about it. "Because AQ10 (the product) actually parasitizes powdery mildew, and needs to do that to stay alive and grow, we initially assumed that before AQ10 was applied there has to be some disease in the field for it to survive on," Gubler explained. "The first couple of years, once we started application on one plot, we treated them all whether there was disease there or not. We found that in vineyards where there was no disease present when we started our applications, we got great control with the product all season long once disease actually appeared."
Disease Thresholds
Most of Roche's field work trials with the product was in winegrape vineyards along the central coast of California. Roche says that testing proved that with proper application technique - good spray coverage - powdery mildew can be controlled all season, if it is applied with very low levels of powdery mildew incidence on leaves or clusters. The outcome of the research program is that AQ10 can be used when disease incidence does not exceed a threshold of 3% on leaves and clusters. Last year, Roche worked with growers on commercial vineyard tests. For the most part, the largest effort with the product was during late season to eliminate sulfur use after bloom. Roche says this is especially important for winegrape growers because sulfur, used late in the season, is thought to have a detrimental effect on wine quality. Roche was successful in taking some rather difficult vineyard blocks, in terms of mildew control, and actually eliminating the use of sulfur from bloom on. One of the blocks was 100 acres with 12 varieties and had no sulfur after bloom. Another 100 acres were treated with late season applications of the biofungicide. Both vineyards had 3% incidence or less during the season. All vineyards were harvested with less than 1% incidence of powdery mildew.
Coverage was critical and researchers found that air carrier sprayers that utilized both high pressure and high volume of air were best. They applied about 75 to 100 gallons per acre depending on canopy size. In the treatment program to eliminate sulfur from bloom on, they used five applications in rotation with DMI fungicides such as Rally and Rubigan. Resistance builds up quickly with DMI fungicides if a grower doesn't use sulfur in rotation, or tank-mixed. What the AQ10 did, said Roche, was allow them to still have resistance management using the product rather than sulfur. "The normal practice would be to tank mix sulfur with Rally or Rubigan. So we came in between Rally and Rubigan applications with AQ10," he said. In treatments where sulfur was not a concern, Roche used two or four applications of the biofungicide in mid- and late-season. The product adds another bullet to the powdery mildew control arsenal, and anytime a grower can do that it's a plus.
According to Gubler, the biofungicide helps combat resistance to the DMI fungicides such as Rally and Rubigan. But it is important to get AQ10 in early and halting its use when disease pressure climbs past certain thresholds. Gubler's lab developed a powdery mildew risk assessment program that uses true weather conditions to produce a risk assessment of what is happening with the powdery mildew pathogens under any set of conditions. The number one factor they look at is temperature. Temperatures between 70 and 85 [degrees] allow the organism to reproduce itself on a five-day interval. If temperatures rise above 85 or descend below 70 [degrees] F, the reproductive rate can be extended to 15 days or more If it gets too hot it stops the disease. The system gives growers a picture of what the pathogen population is doing at any given time. So if a grower is watching this daily, when the risk assessment starts rising, he knows that one week later the pathogen population will be exploding. So it gives growers a seven-day window to make the decision when best to switch back to the more traditional powdery mildew materials and treatments. "If growers use our modeling system, they will know exactly when that is going to happen, about a week before it actually happens," says Gubler.
Application Windows
AQ10 is the first biofungicide developed for the control of powdery mildew, and has three basic application windows depending on what is occurring in the vineyard. Treatment periods include (1) Early season - at bud break or prior to bloom. If it is to be applied at bloom, then two to three chemical sprays are needed prior to the first product application; (2) Pre-veraison - a well-executed grower program is necessary to provide a low population of powdery mildew, prior to product application; Three percent or less of powdery mildew is required for the material to work properly; (3) Pre-harvest - if no powdery mildew is present prior to harvest, the product, with its no days to harvest and no adverse effects on fruit, is a good choice for control.
"Early season use (bud break or ascospore release) is intended to have germinating product spores in place prior to disease onset. The fungus produces a sexual fruiting body called cleistothecium," explained Gubler. "Ascospores are released from the fruiting body in the spring of the year with rains or sprinkler irrigation. Disease onset occurs easily from these spores, sometimes within 12 hours and growers can begin to see signs of the fungus in seven to ten days. Waiting for this event to occur could save the grower a couple of applications and still get effective disease control. The veraison application can be effective in knocking out cleistothesia. We know that the product infects the powdery mildew fungus and as the cleistothesia begins to form, the product colonizes and kills the ascospores which prevents them from overwintering," said Gubler. "We know that resistance to the DMI fungicides (Rally and Rubigan) overwinters in those ascospores. So in vineyards where there are high levels of resistance, the product will be an important tool to combat that resistance." Gubler said that researchers believe they now understand how the product is working. They have done a lot of work on spore germination and compatibility studies with other products. Researchers know that when they spray a half ounce of the product in a vineyard, they are putting millions and millions of spores on the leaves. The good news is that they don't all germinate at the same time. So when mildew starts, there are usually no spores there, ready to infect it. We believe that is why it is more effective to apply the product before disease appears or when disease pressure is very light.
AQ10 is an effective alternative for the control of powdery mildew when used according to label directions. It provides an excellent season-long tool for the prevention of powdery mildew when applied at low incidence levels ([less than]3%) with proper monitoring and good spray coverage.
The product is an integral part of an IPM program and offers a resistance management alternative, reduced health risks to workers, reduced risk to non-targeted pests and reduced concerns for wineries due to lower chemical residues.
For more information, contact your pest control advisor, consultant or Ecogen rep or call (800) 220-2135.
Found some interesting info on the beloved PM
Well after battling with Pm this last go round I decided that in the future using compot teas to suppress the issue before it arrives is the better alternative. If in some event they were ineffective I found a product on line that is basically a bio-fungicide that has beneficial micro life inside to colonize leaf tissue and feed on Pm....Intersting stuff it's called AQ 10...
AQ10 mildew control biofungicide tested.
From: Wines & Vines | Date: 4/1/1997 | Author: Goble, Ron
Print Digg del.icio.us
California grape growers have a new material to use that effectively controls powdery mildew. AQ10[TM] Biofungicide from Ecogen Inc. expands the arsenal available to the industry and will help stretch the lifespan of the existing material as well, says Doug Gubler, University of California Extension Plant Pathologist at Davis. Dr. Gubler, and independent vineyard consultant Corky Roche of Salinas, have been working with the material extensively over the past five years and have learned some crucial things about it. "Because AQ10 (the product) actually parasitizes powdery mildew, and needs to do that to stay alive and grow, we initially assumed that before AQ10 was applied there has to be some disease in the field for it to survive on," Gubler explained. "The first couple of years, once we started application on one plot, we treated them all whether there was disease there or not. We found that in vineyards where there was no disease present when we started our applications, we got great control with the product all season long once disease actually appeared."
Disease Thresholds
Most of Roche's field work trials with the product was in winegrape vineyards along the central coast of California. Roche says that testing proved that with proper application technique - good spray coverage - powdery mildew can be controlled all season, if it is applied with very low levels of powdery mildew incidence on leaves or clusters. The outcome of the research program is that AQ10 can be used when disease incidence does not exceed a threshold of 3% on leaves and clusters. Last year, Roche worked with growers on commercial vineyard tests. For the most part, the largest effort with the product was during late season to eliminate sulfur use after bloom. Roche says this is especially important for winegrape growers because sulfur, used late in the season, is thought to have a detrimental effect on wine quality. Roche was successful in taking some rather difficult vineyard blocks, in terms of mildew control, and actually eliminating the use of sulfur from bloom on. One of the blocks was 100 acres with 12 varieties and had no sulfur after bloom. Another 100 acres were treated with late season applications of the biofungicide. Both vineyards had 3% incidence or less during the season. All vineyards were harvested with less than 1% incidence of powdery mildew.
Coverage was critical and researchers found that air carrier sprayers that utilized both high pressure and high volume of air were best. They applied about 75 to 100 gallons per acre depending on canopy size. In the treatment program to eliminate sulfur from bloom on, they used five applications in rotation with DMI fungicides such as Rally and Rubigan. Resistance builds up quickly with DMI fungicides if a grower doesn't use sulfur in rotation, or tank-mixed. What the AQ10 did, said Roche, was allow them to still have resistance management using the product rather than sulfur. "The normal practice would be to tank mix sulfur with Rally or Rubigan. So we came in between Rally and Rubigan applications with AQ10," he said. In treatments where sulfur was not a concern, Roche used two or four applications of the biofungicide in mid- and late-season. The product adds another bullet to the powdery mildew control arsenal, and anytime a grower can do that it's a plus.
According to Gubler, the biofungicide helps combat resistance to the DMI fungicides such as Rally and Rubigan. But it is important to get AQ10 in early and halting its use when disease pressure climbs past certain thresholds. Gubler's lab developed a powdery mildew risk assessment program that uses true weather conditions to produce a risk assessment of what is happening with the powdery mildew pathogens under any set of conditions. The number one factor they look at is temperature. Temperatures between 70 and 85 [degrees] allow the organism to reproduce itself on a five-day interval. If temperatures rise above 85 or descend below 70 [degrees] F, the reproductive rate can be extended to 15 days or more If it gets too hot it stops the disease. The system gives growers a picture of what the pathogen population is doing at any given time. So if a grower is watching this daily, when the risk assessment starts rising, he knows that one week later the pathogen population will be exploding. So it gives growers a seven-day window to make the decision when best to switch back to the more traditional powdery mildew materials and treatments. "If growers use our modeling system, they will know exactly when that is going to happen, about a week before it actually happens," says Gubler.
Application Windows
AQ10 is the first biofungicide developed for the control of powdery mildew, and has three basic application windows depending on what is occurring in the vineyard. Treatment periods include (1) Early season - at bud break or prior to bloom. If it is to be applied at bloom, then two to three chemical sprays are needed prior to the first product application; (2) Pre-veraison - a well-executed grower program is necessary to provide a low population of powdery mildew, prior to product application; Three percent or less of powdery mildew is required for the material to work properly; (3) Pre-harvest - if no powdery mildew is present prior to harvest, the product, with its no days to harvest and no adverse effects on fruit, is a good choice for control.
"Early season use (bud break or ascospore release) is intended to have germinating product spores in place prior to disease onset. The fungus produces a sexual fruiting body called cleistothecium," explained Gubler. "Ascospores are released from the fruiting body in the spring of the year with rains or sprinkler irrigation. Disease onset occurs easily from these spores, sometimes within 12 hours and growers can begin to see signs of the fungus in seven to ten days. Waiting for this event to occur could save the grower a couple of applications and still get effective disease control. The veraison application can be effective in knocking out cleistothesia. We know that the product infects the powdery mildew fungus and as the cleistothesia begins to form, the product colonizes and kills the ascospores which prevents them from overwintering," said Gubler. "We know that resistance to the DMI fungicides (Rally and Rubigan) overwinters in those ascospores. So in vineyards where there are high levels of resistance, the product will be an important tool to combat that resistance." Gubler said that researchers believe they now understand how the product is working. They have done a lot of work on spore germination and compatibility studies with other products. Researchers know that when they spray a half ounce of the product in a vineyard, they are putting millions and millions of spores on the leaves. The good news is that they don't all germinate at the same time. So when mildew starts, there are usually no spores there, ready to infect it. We believe that is why it is more effective to apply the product before disease appears or when disease pressure is very light.
AQ10 is an effective alternative for the control of powdery mildew when used according to label directions. It provides an excellent season-long tool for the prevention of powdery mildew when applied at low incidence levels ([less than]3%) with proper monitoring and good spray coverage.
The product is an integral part of an IPM program and offers a resistance management alternative, reduced health risks to workers, reduced risk to non-targeted pests and reduced concerns for wineries due to lower chemical residues.
For more information, contact your pest control advisor, consultant or Ecogen rep or call (800) 220-2135.
G
Guest
What would one recomend if a fellow had the following products
Peruvian Seabird Guano 10-10-2
Em1 Bukashi Rice
MetaNaturals Organic 16-0-0 (1tbs per gal)
MetaNaturals Organic 3-3-3 (1tsp per gal)
EarthWorm Castings
MaxiCrop Liquid Seaweed
Molasses
Liquid Karma
Per gallon please.
Temp?
will be brewing with an airstone for 4-5 days.
Looking for a BIG boost of nitrogen for well established sites indoor two weeks before flip!!!!
Thanks for your help on the poo
Peruvian Seabird Guano 10-10-2
Em1 Bukashi Rice
MetaNaturals Organic 16-0-0 (1tbs per gal)
MetaNaturals Organic 3-3-3 (1tsp per gal)
EarthWorm Castings
MaxiCrop Liquid Seaweed
Molasses
Liquid Karma
Per gallon please.
Temp?
will be brewing with an airstone for 4-5 days.
Looking for a BIG boost of nitrogen for well established sites indoor two weeks before flip!!!!
Thanks for your help on the poo
Last edited:
True Living Organics Defined
Hi good peeps and greetings to all the “OC” (Organics Cult) here at Skunk. In response to a few PMs regarding the core dynamics of True Living Organics (TLO) vs. any other form of gardening I decided to whip this out. I had no desire to engage (UB) due to the fact he was not interested in listening to anything I had to say and was in reality here to troll me sent by another troll. But for you guys, no worries, glad to do it.
UB was always raving about soil chemistry and whatnot, and everything he said and knows revolves around that single dynamic and its relationship to botany. I agree with him across the board when dealing with that single narrow bandwidth style of growing and it is indeed very important to have excellent understanding and control of things such as pH and nutrient balance. The addition of synthetic nutrients makes this imperative due to the synthetic salts killing the micro life, who, coincidentally have been handling all these things for plants for millions of years. So you can see why my faith is strong when you talk about anything that has worked so well for millions of years heh heh.
In TLO it’s ALL about the micro life, that’s the style and it’s far from my invention. In TLO your primary focus is not on the plant but on all the soil life and in particular the micro life. With a happy soil-food-web of micro life all other soil life up the line is enabled to survive, in fact all the way up the line to us humans LoL! It IS a feel good style hahaha, and it’s about making the micro life feel good. They will handle ph and giving the plant roots exactly what they need when they need it. The nutrients for a greater part are immobilized within the bodies of the microbial life and through the course of nature, and predators such as protozoa, nematodes etc. are released for the plant to use in a pre-processed state of maximum availability. Now I don’t need to bore you with data regarding this subject matter, but I can recommend a great book on the subject by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis called Teaming with Microbes; also, all the writings of Dr. E. Ingham on the subject.
If you kill off the micro life, they will not be able to do their job and unless the soil conditions are perfectly controlled your plants will suffer. Using synthetics will kill them utterly due to the nature of the nutrient delivery of those type of nutrients via synthetic salts; think of what table salt will do when poured on a slug and there you have it. It will hyper-dehydrate the little guys as soon as moisture levels in the soil-mix drop. In containers this is especially important due to the limited environmental boundaries and the inability of the micro life to come back from the surrounding soil such as in the earth growing would lend itself to. But the real beauty of Living Organics growing is that all the billions of microscopic life in each container or in the rhyzosphere of the plants roots are working hard for you 24hrs a day 7 days a week. All you have to do is a couple of things. First make sure you do nothing that is counterproductive to the micro life populations and do everything to enhance them. This includes but is not limited to, not using chlorinated water, this includes chloramines to a greater degree due to the fact chloramine is far more stable and cannot be simply bubbled out of the water like normal chlorine can. Also make sure your soil structure is “light” and well aerated because like most living things on this planet they require large amounts of air to breathe, as do the roots of the plants. Having compacted soil for example will actually cause the micro life to work against your goals due to the fact they will actually rob the roots of the available air. Synthetic liquid nutrients I explained above.
Your containers full of soil-mix work just like the planet earth does, supporting food chains and complex bio-chemical processes, and through these processes the plants benefit as do all the soil life and up the line. Discounting the micro life in organics growing is absurd to say the least. The complex relationships of the various players in micro land are off the chain complex and anyone wishing to understand more should do some reading and again for starters I recommend that book above I mentioned. But suffice it to say that things like the creation of organics acids like humic and fulvic, the transformation of ammonia (Nitrogen) to nitrates (Nitrogen) the wondrous ways the fungi and bacteria interact and protect the plant from pathogenic micro-invaders and in some cases actually physically put up barriers around the roots as Myco-fungi do; amazing to say the least.
How easy is it? Well here’s the deal my friends, and this is ALL IMPORTANT. TLO thinking is a full paradigm shift from anything synthetic, partly or in whole. You only need to make sure you have your bases covered on the nutrients the plant needs to be happy and healthy, and supply those in your soil-mix. This is not an exact science thing and being fairly close is all good; as I said,, put some faith in Mother Nature that she knows what she is doing for millions of years far better than any human could do her job.
If you choose to go TLO then go all the way, you cannot expect to get great results without having faith in Mother Nature. If you choose to go synthetic, well then why not go synthetic all the way? Synthetic is a very powerful and if using hydroponics is also quite simple. But choosing to cross over the two in a soil-mix is counterproductive and quite a complex choice IMO. Not to mention, if you have not had the pleasure of smoking well grown organic cannabis, I think you need to do that, then see what you think. I have been growing weed for 30 years plus, and I grow living organics straight up for the final results of connoisseur quality smoke, period.
Can you get larger yields using synthetics, certainly I think and you may see a difference of say 15% - 20% in your yields with synthetics vs. organics depending upon your skills with organics. In living organics you will see them just about neck and neck; however, in hydroponics synthetics you allow the plants to devote a far greater amount of their total energies to the upper plant because they don’t use it plowing roots through the “earth.” So in hydro-synth you can certainly get the best yields in my experience and opinion without a doubt.
Now here’s the thing, if you are a cash cropper, or maximum yields are what you are all about, or what you judge marijuana growing by solely, I would not recommend organics or even Living Organics, because it will take you some time to really have the understanding and skills to command huge yields from either, but don’t get me wrong yields are fine and dandy, just ask anyone who has pulled it off well, there are many of those peeps here at Skunk. But if you are about the ultimate highest quality of smoke that can be had in my 30 years of experience then this is the way to go absolutely, hands down without a doubt.
Do a little reading on the subject matter and it will help you to understand in more depth than I care to go into in this post due to the length this post would have to be LoL! I will post a link for you to get started written by very reputable sources in the field. In finishing I would like to say one more time that I didn’t invent Living Organics as a style, I only coined the name to represent the style better IMO. In synthetics it is all about pouring on (and subsequentially flushing out) massive amounts of nutrients in far greater ratios than the plant would ever use in order to get it to uptake a very small percentage of those nutrients. In organics it’s all about letting nature and life and symbiosis do what it has been doing well for millions of years and making everything 100% available; when using Living Organics you accelerate all these organics processes for supernatural results using faith in Mother Nature.
- REv
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images...00-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg)
LINK: http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microbes-Gardeners-Guide-Soil/dp/0881927775 (http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microbes-Gardeners-Guide-Soil/dp/0881927775)
LINK: http://www.energybulletin.net/23428.html (http://www.energybulletin.net/23428.html)
LINK: http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/biology.html (http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/biology.html)
LINK: http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/soil_food_web.html (http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/soil_food_web.html)
Hi good peeps and greetings to all the “OC” (Organics Cult) here at Skunk. In response to a few PMs regarding the core dynamics of True Living Organics (TLO) vs. any other form of gardening I decided to whip this out. I had no desire to engage (UB) due to the fact he was not interested in listening to anything I had to say and was in reality here to troll me sent by another troll. But for you guys, no worries, glad to do it.
UB was always raving about soil chemistry and whatnot, and everything he said and knows revolves around that single dynamic and its relationship to botany. I agree with him across the board when dealing with that single narrow bandwidth style of growing and it is indeed very important to have excellent understanding and control of things such as pH and nutrient balance. The addition of synthetic nutrients makes this imperative due to the synthetic salts killing the micro life, who, coincidentally have been handling all these things for plants for millions of years. So you can see why my faith is strong when you talk about anything that has worked so well for millions of years heh heh.
In TLO it’s ALL about the micro life, that’s the style and it’s far from my invention. In TLO your primary focus is not on the plant but on all the soil life and in particular the micro life. With a happy soil-food-web of micro life all other soil life up the line is enabled to survive, in fact all the way up the line to us humans LoL! It IS a feel good style hahaha, and it’s about making the micro life feel good. They will handle ph and giving the plant roots exactly what they need when they need it. The nutrients for a greater part are immobilized within the bodies of the microbial life and through the course of nature, and predators such as protozoa, nematodes etc. are released for the plant to use in a pre-processed state of maximum availability. Now I don’t need to bore you with data regarding this subject matter, but I can recommend a great book on the subject by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis called Teaming with Microbes; also, all the writings of Dr. E. Ingham on the subject.
If you kill off the micro life, they will not be able to do their job and unless the soil conditions are perfectly controlled your plants will suffer. Using synthetics will kill them utterly due to the nature of the nutrient delivery of those type of nutrients via synthetic salts; think of what table salt will do when poured on a slug and there you have it. It will hyper-dehydrate the little guys as soon as moisture levels in the soil-mix drop. In containers this is especially important due to the limited environmental boundaries and the inability of the micro life to come back from the surrounding soil such as in the earth growing would lend itself to. But the real beauty of Living Organics growing is that all the billions of microscopic life in each container or in the rhyzosphere of the plants roots are working hard for you 24hrs a day 7 days a week. All you have to do is a couple of things. First make sure you do nothing that is counterproductive to the micro life populations and do everything to enhance them. This includes but is not limited to, not using chlorinated water, this includes chloramines to a greater degree due to the fact chloramine is far more stable and cannot be simply bubbled out of the water like normal chlorine can. Also make sure your soil structure is “light” and well aerated because like most living things on this planet they require large amounts of air to breathe, as do the roots of the plants. Having compacted soil for example will actually cause the micro life to work against your goals due to the fact they will actually rob the roots of the available air. Synthetic liquid nutrients I explained above.
Your containers full of soil-mix work just like the planet earth does, supporting food chains and complex bio-chemical processes, and through these processes the plants benefit as do all the soil life and up the line. Discounting the micro life in organics growing is absurd to say the least. The complex relationships of the various players in micro land are off the chain complex and anyone wishing to understand more should do some reading and again for starters I recommend that book above I mentioned. But suffice it to say that things like the creation of organics acids like humic and fulvic, the transformation of ammonia (Nitrogen) to nitrates (Nitrogen) the wondrous ways the fungi and bacteria interact and protect the plant from pathogenic micro-invaders and in some cases actually physically put up barriers around the roots as Myco-fungi do; amazing to say the least.
How easy is it? Well here’s the deal my friends, and this is ALL IMPORTANT. TLO thinking is a full paradigm shift from anything synthetic, partly or in whole. You only need to make sure you have your bases covered on the nutrients the plant needs to be happy and healthy, and supply those in your soil-mix. This is not an exact science thing and being fairly close is all good; as I said,, put some faith in Mother Nature that she knows what she is doing for millions of years far better than any human could do her job.
If you choose to go TLO then go all the way, you cannot expect to get great results without having faith in Mother Nature. If you choose to go synthetic, well then why not go synthetic all the way? Synthetic is a very powerful and if using hydroponics is also quite simple. But choosing to cross over the two in a soil-mix is counterproductive and quite a complex choice IMO. Not to mention, if you have not had the pleasure of smoking well grown organic cannabis, I think you need to do that, then see what you think. I have been growing weed for 30 years plus, and I grow living organics straight up for the final results of connoisseur quality smoke, period.
Can you get larger yields using synthetics, certainly I think and you may see a difference of say 15% - 20% in your yields with synthetics vs. organics depending upon your skills with organics. In living organics you will see them just about neck and neck; however, in hydroponics synthetics you allow the plants to devote a far greater amount of their total energies to the upper plant because they don’t use it plowing roots through the “earth.” So in hydro-synth you can certainly get the best yields in my experience and opinion without a doubt.
Now here’s the thing, if you are a cash cropper, or maximum yields are what you are all about, or what you judge marijuana growing by solely, I would not recommend organics or even Living Organics, because it will take you some time to really have the understanding and skills to command huge yields from either, but don’t get me wrong yields are fine and dandy, just ask anyone who has pulled it off well, there are many of those peeps here at Skunk. But if you are about the ultimate highest quality of smoke that can be had in my 30 years of experience then this is the way to go absolutely, hands down without a doubt.
Do a little reading on the subject matter and it will help you to understand in more depth than I care to go into in this post due to the length this post would have to be LoL! I will post a link for you to get started written by very reputable sources in the field. In finishing I would like to say one more time that I didn’t invent Living Organics as a style, I only coined the name to represent the style better IMO. In synthetics it is all about pouring on (and subsequentially flushing out) massive amounts of nutrients in far greater ratios than the plant would ever use in order to get it to uptake a very small percentage of those nutrients. In organics it’s all about letting nature and life and symbiosis do what it has been doing well for millions of years and making everything 100% available; when using Living Organics you accelerate all these organics processes for supernatural results using faith in Mother Nature.
- REv
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images...00-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg)
LINK: http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microbes-Gardeners-Guide-Soil/dp/0881927775 (http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microbes-Gardeners-Guide-Soil/dp/0881927775)
LINK: http://www.energybulletin.net/23428.html (http://www.energybulletin.net/23428.html)
LINK: http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/biology.html (http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/biology.html)
LINK: http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/soil_food_web.html (http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/soil_food_web.html)
sophisto
Member
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They're based in Eugene, Oregon and have been involved in organic/sustainable agriculture for over 30 years.
Very cool people who will answer any question about their products. Their potting soil is organic and very nice. Far better than FFOF because of the quality of the ingredients that they use.
DignanDignan said:DTE rules.
True story about DTE. Last fall they formulated a new soilless mix, organic, for the professional nursery trade on the West Coast.
Good stuff too - equal amounts of peat moss & coir, earthworm castings (@ 15%), perlite, vermiculite & pumice (all 3 items for the CeC deal). dolomite lime & kelp. It is also heavily inoculated with several strains of bacteia, fungai and trichoderma spores from the coir. Without a doubt the best soil I've ever used.
They tested it with several nurseries and I was lucky enough to grab a bale (3 cf.) at their main retail store in Eugene.
When they released the product it was difficult to source because the potting soil industry in Oregon is a huge business since this state is the 3rd largest nursery stock producer and competition is fierce. Basically Sunshine mixes are the main one sold to commercial nurseries in 60-yard units. That's a lot of soil. Very few nurseries in the valley here mix their own - it's too costly vs. buying Sunshine mixes. ProMix has had a hard time getting any amount of business so far. Hopefully that will change.
I called DTE and spoke with the guy who does the formulation for their fertilizer mixes, soils, etc. and I told him my situation that I wanted to use their product but it requires a 200+ mile round trip to buy it. Fuel prices what they are it's not feasible.
Solution? He gave me the exact formula for the soil over the telephone. I couldn't believe it. Down to the amount of inoculation product. It uses their product, obviously, but I thought this was a pretty generous act as well as an outstanding example of customer service.
Great company run by people that care about their products and more importantly their customers - a win-win deal for everyone.
He also gave me some great compost tea recipes to achieve specific N-P-K numbers using some of the various dry fertilizer mixes. I'll pull them up and post them on the compost tea thread. Pretty inexpensive way to make your own nutrients with complete control on the quality.
HTH
CC
I know exactly what you mean Clackamas, its nice to do business with a company that is willing to take that extra step with their customers,,, spend time giving details & usually discuss info that is normally unavailable to the general public, even if it has nothing to do with one of their lines,,, its a pleasant change of pace - companies like this are few & far between.
V
vonforne
Would you put that down in writing for all of us?
V
Vvonforne said:
It's like any good potting soil mix (ProMix, Sunshine, LC, et al) with a few specific ingredients specified.
And before I post this let me add that this is not make a claim that this soil is the end all to beat all - it's simply a soil mix that I found to be the best one I have used to date.
There are other mixes that I'm sure do a far better job than this one.
EWC - 15% with the comment from their 'tech guy' that if you're using good, balanced EWC then more than this is excess. Not sure that I completely agree but there it is.
The aeration agents are split up equally between pumice, vermiculite and perlite so that their (aeration agents) make up 25% of the soil total. Each of these agents have varying Cec (cation exchange capacity) as in perlite/0 and vermiculite/90, etc.
The remaining 60% is split between peat and coir at 2 parts peat and 1 part coir. According to their tech guy, could use 100% coir but the manufacturer is trying to market this product to a specialized segment of the nursery stock industry here and not putting peat into a soil mix would be the kiss of death for those folks, i.e. marketing realities and all.
The amounts of dolomite lime, kelp meal are almost identical to the LC numbers and the differences aren't really worth posting. It's a wash.
They add their mycorrhizae product, Soluble Root Growth Enhancer at 5 lbs. per cubic yard which breaks down to 3 oz. per cf and the 'grow store' price for 5 lbs. is around $65.00 USD
We discussed the addition of their product and he told me that a more effective way to use it would be to simply inoculate the clone roots at the time that you transplant. Methods include dipping the 'plugs' into the powder (pretty wasteful, IMHO), painting the powder on with an artist brush, making a slurry, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.........
You probably get the idea, eh? LOL
Then LIveEarth Humate is added @ 8 lbs. per cubic yard. This product is $15.00 per 50 lbs. in the western USA. It is not the only choice. It may not even be the best choice. It is a starting point to learn about adding these type of agents. I'm not offering an opinion one way or the other.
Finally there is Gaia Green Glacial Rock Dust 10 lbs. per cubic yard. There are other products in the same vein. This costs about the same as the LiveEarth Humate. The Canadians just raised their prices by 40% - bastards! LOL
Hit this soil mix with a properly made aerated compost tea at start of the grow cycle and again at the beginning of the flower cycle and give them lots of light and just use plain water. Hit them weekly (or so) with a kelp meal/molasses tea and foliar sprays of the same diluted tea and your daily 'garden time' will be about 15 minutes on average.
I do use a general organic cold-process fish emulsion when I happen to think of it. This medicine grow isn't my life and sometime things don't get done on a regular basis - to say the least.
Pretty stupid easy to pull off some nice medicine.
HTH
CC
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