Cann's Organic No-Till Garden

Thanks Cann!

Great thread thusfar.

Not to be a know it all or anything but an mantis egg sack is not a cocoon. It is actually called a ootheca, or an ooth for short.

Keep the updates coming and good luck with everything.

thanks for that varanoid

I actually did know it was called an ootheca...but figured most folks here wouldn't/wouldn't really care, so I used cocoon for simplicitys sake. i shall be more scientific in the future...

applied a barley enzyme tea to everyone yesterday...pics as soon as the lights turn on

Hehe, thanks for the extremely thorough and detailed response, Cann.

I appreciate you taking the time in spreading the knowledge to help the RIU community.

Though I kind of knew all of that information already(I kind of grow plants(not cannabis) for a living), I was kind of more asking:



Why specifically barley for enzyme tea?



-Snafu

And if you have not all ready, you should definitely try foliar spraying with fresh aloe juice. It is similar to your coconut milk use.

-Snafu

Snafu- The type of barley is less of an issue. Whatever the Brew store has. Corn seed tea is another dandy one.

Snafu -

honestly, I am not quite sure why we use barley, but if I had to guess it would be because it is the cheapest thing available for the amount of protein/enzymes it provides. like rrog said, corn is another great cheap option. alfalfa works great if you are already sprouting alfalfa seeds for eating, plus you get the bonus triacontanol - which it turns out is highly concentrated in the root tip. a.k.a. don't use an alfalfa seed tea during flower. rice works (although it takes longer to germinate..another reason we use barley), so do mung beans, adzuki beans, etc. basically any seed will work as long as you can germinate it, but barley is cheap, germinates quick, and provides a bunch of great enzymes. there are a few enzymes which barley doesn't create, off the top I can think of zeatin, which is named after the genus zea (of which corn is a member). here is a c/p from wikipedia in regards to zeatin:

Zeatin is a plant hormone derived from the purine adenine. It is a member of the plant growth hormone family known as cytokinins. Zeatin was first discovered in immature corn kernels from the genus Zea. It promotes growth of lateral buds and stimulates cell division to produce bushier plants if sprayed on meristems.


so its good to mix it up now and then...i tried to do a sprouted corn tea every few weeks just for the hell of it.

oh, also, another great aspect of the sprouting process is that you can get multiple enzyme "extractions" if you will from a single batch. since sprouts need to be rinsed every ~12 hrs, you can use the rinse water (NOT THE SOAK WATER!!!) undiluted to water your plants. usually I just rinse all my seeds, dump the rinse water in a 5 gal bucket, and throw it on my veggie seedlings. this way I can get 2-3 weak enzyme teas before I get the concentrated one at the end. not bad for the 20 cents it costs me for 1/4 cup of barley seed.


and in regards to aloe foliars, I spray once or twice a week I can get praying leaves off aloe foliars alone..its pretty intense. great stuff. have you tried aloe as a rooting compound yet? phenomenal..

oh yeah, and coconut milk is drastically different than young coconut water. nobody use coconut milk lol...please. that would be a mess.


EDIT: also, rrog - my local homebrew store doesn't even carry grain that can be germinated..they looked at me crazy when I asked. so maybe we should reconsider directing people towards the homebrew store for their grain. we don't want folks to buy pregerminated (malted) grain thinking it is the right stuff...

maybe the feed store? I had to order my barley online because I couldn't find anything organic locally. all i know is that the homebrew store might not be the best place to look, at least down here.

~24hrs after application of a barley enzyme tea. This was taken soon after the lights turned on. they always seem to perk up during the dark period after the enzymes

"The Jesus Effect"



pray, pray, pray


micro clover popping up in the no-till

Great Idea- Where did you find it online? Cleaning up the sourcing of these materials is a good idea. Maybe a good idea for the ROLS thread? I have a spreadsheet of the items that are pretty much in Gas's first page of his ROLS thread. S'pose that would be a good idea? Makes things even easier to have people try real soil if the sourcing is already figured out.

EDIT: WOW man! Love the grow and love the pics! Do you like taking pics? Seems like you do. Props!!

Funny, while I'm in between grows this year, I find I'm now pampering the houseplants that I normally don't fuss over. They're all getting premium VC! Using Aloe on a troubled African Violet.

Cann, were you saying that the homebrew store you went to did't even sell grain? IF they sell grain you should be able to sprout it. I actually work at a brewery. lots fun stuff

my LHBS carries tons of grain, but they only carry malted grain...i can buy 50lb bags of malted 2-row for instance, but I can't get 50lb bags of straight unaltered 2-row. I live in southern california if that makes any difference...

you work at a brewery? you bastard.... lol

which brewery if you don't mind telling us?

rrog - I got the barley off amazon. here is the link http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Barley-Seed-Ornamental-Barleygrass/dp/B000E7OYVU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1364589107&sr=8-3&keywords=organic+barley not a bad price at all...especially since we aren't buying in bulk here...

a source list for ROLS materials would be an awesome contribution to the thread, especially having a western US vs eastern US breakdown or something of that nature. we should first and foremost direct people into their local areas to source materials, but if they can't find it locally we should have a list of the places they could expect to find things (in their region), or websites where they can order them. i'm sure this would save a bunch of people a ton of time and hassle. for instance, I used to buy 1 gallon bags of pumice for $4 - then after cootz told me to look at OC farm supply I found 50lbs of pumice for $9....insane savings. its things like this that people need to know in order to make the transition to ROLS even cheaper/hassle free.

and yeah, i do enjoy taking pictures even though I have a terrible camera. cannabis is a beautiful plant, and she often calls out to me for attention lol. i can't help but share the happiness of my ladies with the world. walked into the veg room today and the leaves are at an even higher angle praying...looks unnatural almost. good ol' enzymes...

funny about the houseplants. I'm sure they're loving the attention, and of course the primo EWC (or VC...did we ever establish a difference between the two definitions? I know cootz was going on about it a while back..)

Thanks for the link on the barley. I had to order Pumice from ebay, but was good stuff. Latest soil aeration amendments started with small biochar, then up to 1/2" - 3/4" Pumice, then 1" - 1 1/2" lava rock. Should be kick ass in a sphagnum mix.

Anyway, EWC would be the actual little turds, whereas VermiCompost would be the castings and composting matter. The VC is better.

It might be a cool part of the ROLS thread to have an updated database of new-found deals. As you say, to drive the overall operating cost down further.

Yeah they actually dont have to many homebrew stores up where im at. And they should sell regular unmalted. its really not that hard to malt the grain yourself either.. and the brewery I work at is a micro brewery just opened up eastern WA not long ago.

Looking forward to hopefully being able to grow again soon! great info guys

bibbidy bump.

pics to come later. bought new hortilux bulbs today, amongst other assorted goodies. it's a good day

You running those horti's in digital ballasts?

Spray your potassium silicate this week?

horti's are indeed in digital ballasts...no magnetic for me thanks.

haven't sprayed a foliar in a few days out of sheer laziness, but next time I spray it'll be neem/potassium silicate

thanks for providing all that info about potassium silicate BTW...good stuff. personally after looking at all the data I'm gonna keep using it (i had already read most of that anyway)...it doesn't seem too dangerous/synthetic (for me at least)...the temperatures needed to create it are similar to that of a ceramic kiln firing...nothing too insane. nowhere near as damaging to the earth as many other nutrients. for what its worth I think it is still a great addition to my garden, and IMO it is "acceptable" for organic gardening. doesn't necessarily mean it is ideal, but I don't think it is going to affect the quality of the medicine in the long run.

others may have a different take on this. I'm definitely not a "purist" in the sense that some of y'all are...i live in a city, and don't have enough time/resources to do things like find horsetail or nettle and process them into a silica supplement. gotta make sacrifices where you can...i drink RO water but still have to clean my dishes with the poison tap...compromises are the name of the game here in babylon. if i lived in the woods and had all the time in the world, potassium silicate would not be a part of my regime. but given the circumstances, i'm gonna keep using it. for me it kind of falls into a neutral category between synthetic salt nutrients, and organic bottled nutes. still from a bottle, but not poison IMO. it is definitely one of the few aspects of my garden that I look to improve on, but for now it is staying. plus the effects of silica are extremely visible...super thick stems, fat leaves, etc...definitely worth it, especially given how much stress I often put my garden under.

Fullers Earth Clay, available from Mountain Rose Herbs, contains 70.85% silica...

and Rhassoul Clay contains 58% as well as 25% magnesium..

Might be a cheap, 'more organic' alternative...

As I recall, one of the funkier aspects of Silica is its bioavailability. Glass is silica. Anyway we all know this but I always wonder about bioavailability. Seems reasonable that a natural clay would have available Silica. Otherwise, I'm with Cann that a heated natural sand is OK in my book. As long as the manufacturer, PQ Corporation, is not like Monsanto.

so these new bulbs have raised the temp of my room ~ 8 or 9 degrees. hovering around 84 right now....making me worried about the summertime...

these babies are bright as fuck too! makes me realize how old the other bulbs must have been...at least a year, if not more. Hopefully i'll see some improvement in growth.

pics to come, gotta sort through the photos. learning how to work a new camera i think i'm getting the hang of it....