DonBrennons 'Unconventional' organic gardens

DonBrennon said:

Hahaha, I've got 3 tent's, but as you said, I like to pack them in tight. My main tent will be coming down after this run, I fookin hate tents TBH, and i'll be using the full room with my DIY COBS. I gotta admit I'm a little nervous giving up the 3 x 600 HID I'm using in there, but the results I'm getting with the prototype COB light are quite impressive and easing my fears.

With regards to strains.........I'd been running Blueberry and Bubblegum cuts in mono cultures for years and while that is good for consistency of yield, it does become a bit dull. So I'm on a bit of a pheno hunt at the mo', hoping to find some real killer mothers and a few bad ass poppa's

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tasty ones but i hear that, bro, so yeah, glad your on the hunt, amigo!!

i wouldn't worry too much about the cob shift, i just grew like 15 plants under 5 types of light, and alllll were fire, it must be the organic soil thats gonna make your herb magical!!! all the lights will produce, but i bet your plants cob will be healthier than ever if heights are right!

good luck transitioning DB

got about 7-10 kinds in the cupboard which is so nice,
but i could NOT be happier that i got afghani, cush, romulan, chernoby-bubba, and some other ones on way..

variety is the spice of life! nice when you can take a few weeks off of one of your own strains!

DonBrennon said:

Ooooopps, been at it againView attachment 3771725

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Damn! How much did that pack of Jack cost you? GreaseMonkey will be interested in it for sure!

I was thinking about you when I was screening my compost. I found a lot of wood chunks and biochar. You remember about a month or two ago when you were having N problems, well I did about the same thing lol... I think that the screen will fix my problem though.

MustangStudFarm said:

Damn! How much did that pack of Jack cost you? GreaseMonkey will be interested in it for sure!

I was thinking about you when I was screening my compost. I found a lot of wood chunks and biochar. You remember about a month or two ago when you were having N problems, well I did about the same thing lol... I think that the screen will fix my problem though.

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£120........not cheap and my mate just killed a full pack, pmsl. Ran it about 15 years ago and loved it, it's a bit of a strange one.....or the ones we had were. They don't look to be full of trich's, hard to explain, but the buds were sort of greasy, big and strong as fook.

calliandra said:

Ah trichs, so beautiful
I love your USB scope's color management. I've sadly failed to get rid of all those reds on mine.
What are you using?

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Sorry for the late reply Calli, this is what I've got, but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.................although some quality pictures can be achieved, actually getting them is a real PITA!!!!!! The capture mechanism is good, for sure, but user interface is shocking, everything is in the wrong place, and the stand it came with went straight in the bin.
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/usb-digital-microscope-with-400x-magnification-n43hh

Random flower tent shots........................personal observations, 5 gals isn't enough for some of these plants, even with topdressing.................... and I need to either get more available silica in my soil or start adding it to my water, nothing can stand up on it's own!!!!!!!!!!! (which means also means the buds are heavy). Admittedly, my canopy management has been atrocious this run, but I'm not used to running far sativa dom hybrids and most of these plants were genetically unpredictable to start with. I'm used to packing lots of small indica dom plants in tight and they 'support' each other if needed.

Got these in much bigger pots, with better soil, including my first ever successful batch of my own homemade 'thermo' compost........................just been watered (badly needed as shown by the sativa), with a concoction of kelp extract, fermented SST, FFJ, OHN, lacto and a little humic acid in the mix..................I should document what I'm adding and the results, I suppose, but I've always grown off instinct and I'm getting a good vibe off these ladies.

DonBrennon said:

Sorry for the late reply Calli, this is what I've got, but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.................although some quality pictures can be achieved, actually getting them is a real PITA!!!!!! The capture mechanism is good, for sure, but user interface is shocking, everything is in the wrong place, and the stand it came with went straight in the bin.
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/usb-digital-microscope-with-400x-magnification-n43hh

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Haha no problem & thanks, sounds like yours and mine share the same handling experience
But I was checking out some aphids the other day and discovered that my cam actually makes decent color images if I keep the lens farther away from what I'm looking at - I'll try that for the trichs next time

Aw seeing your leggy girls I got all sentimental for my NL5xHaze clones, which also grew that way But yours are just loaded! Beautiful!

DonBrennon said:

Got these in much bigger pots, with better soil, including my first ever successful batch of my own homemade 'thermo' compost........................just been watered (badly needed as shown by the sativa), with a concoction of kelp extract, fermented SST, FFJ, OHN, lacto and a little humic acid in the mix..................I should document what I'm adding and the results, I suppose, but I've always grown off instinct and I'm getting a good vibe off these ladies.

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Wohoo - congrats on the thermocompost! Still waiting to make mine, been thinking of making it in the cellar when I finally can, as autumn is pulling in real fast here...

Nah you don't need to document, just brace yourself for tons of questions haha
I'm trying to figure out how to feed my soil now and just made my first fresh SST. Not sure it helped any, maybe I'm a tad late as the auto I'm growing is already almost past stretch, but it can't hurt either right
How do you make the kelp extract? How do you make the humic acid?
And what's OHN?
Cheers!

calliandra said:

Haha no problem & thanks, sounds like yours and mine share the same handling experience
But I was checking out some aphids the other day and discovered that my cam actually makes decent color images if I keep the lens farther away from what I'm looking at - I'll try that for the trichs next time

Aw seeing your leggy girls I got all sentimental for my NL5xHaze clones, which also grew that way But yours are just loaded! Beautiful!

Wohoo - congrats on the thermocompost! Still waiting to make mine, been thinking of making it in the cellar when I finally can, as autumn is pulling in real fast here...

Nah you don't need to document, just brace yourself for tons of questions haha
I'm trying to figure out how to feed my soil now and just made my first fresh SST. Not sure it helped any, maybe I'm a tad late as the auto I'm growing is already almost past stretch, but it can't hurt either right
How do you make the kelp extract? How do you make the humic acid?
And what's OHN?
Cheers!

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The kelp extract is rehydrated meal, blended in clean water to make like a kelp soup(edit. ......this is kept in the fridge). Can't remember the exact ratios off hand, but think I got the method from build a soil website.

For the humic acid, I've got potassium humate powder from 'the nutrient company'. A big bag cost about 20 pounds but should last years.

OHN - Oriental herb nutrient. But I actually followed a recipe from the unconventional farmer for what they call immunoboost. I put all sorts into mine though on top of the recommended garlic and ginger. 'Supposed' to improve the plants SAR and work as a pest deterrent, don't seem to put my thrip off though Lol

DonBrennon said:

The kelp extract is rehydrated meal, blended in clean water to make like a kelp soup(edit. ......this is kept in the fridge). Can't remember the exact ratios off hand, but think I got the method from build a soil website.

For the humic acid, I've got potassium humate powder from 'the nutrient company'. A big bag cost about 20 pounds but should last years.

OHN - Oriental herb nutrient. But I actually followed a recipe from the unconventional farmer for what they call immunoboost. I put all sorts into mine though on top of the recommended garlic and ginger. 'Supposed' to improve the plants SAR and work as a pest deterrent, don't seem to put my thrip off though Lol

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Ah thanks, will definitely read up on all that!

I've been skeptical about using kelp, seeing I'm nowhere near the ocean and have a secret ambition to be completely local / self sustainable. But comfrey, which on the bare NPK level would be quite similar - as far as I've gotten, that is - seems not to be 100% interchangeable with it?
Do you have any insights regarding this?

Ah yes, the unconventional farmer's!
It's really interesting, the SST and FFJ actually remind me of the somewhat obscure concepts of endocyctosis ( whereby plant roots also "eat" complex protein molecules and even whole living microorganisms by encapsulating them similarly to what apparently happens in our digestive systems) and remutation (by which a dying organism actually doesn't die in our sense of the word, but dis- and reassembles its intracellular building blocks - like mitochondria and chloroplasts, which are then available for reassembly in new life).
Based on these two concepts, the Norwegian Herwig Pommeresche has been advocating (and practicing amazingly successfully) feeding living organic matter (like pureed and watered kitchen scraps) directly to the soil for years - cutting the intermediary step of composting out of the equation.
And lo, here's these guys recommending pureed sprouts for growth and pureed fruits for flowering (and especially their tip, to use parts from the same plants / phase of growth we're aiming to improve)! Yeah they speak of hormones and enzymes specific to the respective phase of growth, but there may be remutation going on in there too
So definitely something I'll be playing more with!

calliandra said:

Ah thanks, will definitely read up on all that!

I've been skeptical about using kelp, seeing I'm nowhere near the ocean and have a secret ambition to be completely local / self sustainable. But comfrey, which on the bare NPK level would be quite similar - as far as I've gotten, that is - seems not to be 100% interchangeable with it?
Do you have any insights regarding this?

Ah yes, the unconventional farmer's!
It's really interesting, the SST and FFJ actually remind me of the somewhat obscure concepts of endocarditis ( whereby plant roots also "eat" complex protein molecules and even whole living microorganisms by encapsulating them similarly to what apparently happens in our digestive systems) and remutation (by which a dying organism actually doesn't die in our sense of the word, but dis- and reassembles its intracellular building blocks - like mitochondria and chloroplasts, which are then available for reassembly in new life).
Based on these two concepts, the Norwegian Herwig Pommeresche has been advocating (and practicing amazingly successfully) feeding living organic matter (like pureed and watered kitchen scraps) directly to the soil for years - cutting the intermediary step of composting out of the equation.
And lo, here's these guys recommending pureed sprouts for growth and pureed fruits for flowering (and especially their tip, to use parts from the same plants / phase of growth we're aiming to improve)! Yeah they speak of hormones and enzymes specific to the respective phase of growth, but there may be remutation going on in there too
So definitely something I'll be playing more with!

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Hahaha, damn Calli, I always have to start researching after reading your post's, pmsl, your knowledge of microbiology is way beyond mine.

With regards to the kelp, I've no links or articles to post, but from what I can remember reading it's just got a wider spectrum of minerals/micronutrients because it grows in the ocean and I think sea water contains over 90 known minerals. This means it has access to every thing it needs to grow at an extremely fast rate, which brings us to the other benefits.........Growth hormones. Now Comfrey does grow at quite a fast rate, but nothing like the speed kelp grows at and I 'THINK' kelp contains more of these growth hormones too....................................I could well be wrong.

What I do 'KNOW' is that the majority of organic MJ growers I've come across or read about won't grow without it. I'm no expert in organics, I only converted 2-3 years ago, and, like you, I try to source locally, but there are 2 things I won't go without that I have to get mailed...........kelp & neem meal.

If you've got any horse feed outlets near you, it's possible they will stock seaweed meal. I've read people say that only 'horticultural grade' kelp meal should be used, but to me it's all the same. Maybe 'Horticultural grade' gets rinsed or something, but even then, I sometimes think we over concern ourselves about salt killing microbes, microbes love brackish water and I read somewhere that there's more life in a teaspoon of seawater than a teaspoon of soil.

Anyway.........back to google and endocarditis.............and remutation...........and Herwig Pommeresche LOL

DonBrennon said:

Hahaha, damn Calli, I always have to start researching after reading your post's, pmsl, your knowledge of microbiology is way beyond mine.

With regards to the kelp, I've no links or articles to post, but from what I can remember reading it's just got a wider spectrum of minerals/micronutrients because it grows in the ocean and I think sea water contains over 90 known minerals. This means it has access to every thing it needs to grow at an extremely fast rate, which brings us to the other benefits.........Growth hormones. Now Comfrey does grow at quite a fast rate, but nothing like the speed kelp grows at and I 'THINK' kelp contains more of these growth hormones too....................................I could well be wrong.

What I do 'KNOW' is that the majority of organic MJ growers I've come across or read about won't grow without it. I'm no expert in organics, I only converted 2-3 years ago, and, like you, I try to source locally, but there are 2 things I won't go without that I have to get mailed...........kelp & neem meal.

If you've got any horse feed outlets near you, it's possible they will stock seaweed meal. I've read people say that only 'horticultural grade' kelp meal should be used, but to me it's all the same. Maybe 'Horticultural grade' gets rinsed or something, but even then, I sometimes think we over concern ourselves about salt killing microbes, microbes love brackish water and I read somewhere that there's more life in a teaspoon of seawater than a teaspoon of soil.

Anyway.........back to google and endocarditis.............and remutation...........and Herwig Pommeresche LOL

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oh I am soooo sorry!
But indeed, it's intriguing -- I did a search online a while back for these two phenomena so I could learn more about them & share more easily, but hardly found anything (and if I recall correctly, practically nothing in English - as Pommeresche has been spreading his info mainly in German and Norwegian)

For remutation, check out Lynn Margulis, who bases her Gaia Theory on the observed symbioses of bacteria uniting to form cell structures: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_24

The guy who actually studied remutation was a German biologist called Hugo Schanderl - by a stroke of luck, I found today what I missed back on my first search - an article in which he discusses how bacteria emerge from dead plant matter that was grown in sterile conditions - sadly, only in German: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1438-8677.1953.tb00108.x/abstract
Ah, no matter, here's a quick n dirty translation of the abstract

Abstract

1. When plants, grown under sterile precautionary conditions in test tubes on nutrient agar, are killed by brief heating or freezing, and the nutrient base is provided with sufficient hydration, one can observe that even from the corpses of these completely "sterile" plants bacteria emerge.
   
2. A simple method is described by which it is possible on the one hand, to initiate a deacidifying plasmolysis and subsequently the development of bacteria at any random point of a compact, healthy plant body. On the other hand, the described method allows us to observe the processes going on in the plasmolised cells day by day, and ultimately to take innoculant samples.
   
3. With the new method it is clearly demonstrable that the development of bacteria in decomposing, dying cells originates from within the cells. Enormous amounts of bacteria emerge from the decomposition of all plastids, like chloro-, leuko-, chromo- and elaioplasts. Even the nuclei give rise to bacteria on decomposition.

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So this guy actually observed remutation happening.. in the 50's haha
And practically no one has talked about it since

Shhhhhhhhh....
time to kick back and relax haha

Kelp!
Excellent idea about the horse feed outlet thanks -will definitely check on that
And interesting that about the broader nutrient spectrum due to sea water environment - makes total sense, as well as the growth hormone thing! Kelp does grow like crazy
HAve you heard of that 3d ocean farmer? http://greenwave.org/about-us/ cool thing theyve got going there

Cheers!

calliandra said:

oh I am soooo sorry!
But indeed, it's intriguing -- I did a search online a while back for these two phenomena so I could learn more about them & share more easily, but hardly found anything (and if I recall correctly, practically nothing in English - as Pommeresche has been spreading his info mainly in German and Norwegian)

For remutation, check out Lynn Margulis, who bases her Gaia Theory on the observed symbioses of bacteria uniting to form cell structures: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_24

The guy who actually studied remutation was a German biologist called Hugo Schanderl - by a stroke of luck, I found today what I missed back on my first search - an article in which he discusses how bacteria emerge from dead plant matter that was grown in sterile conditions - sadly, only in German: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1438-8677.1953.tb00108.x/abstract
Ah, no matter, here's a quick n dirty translation of the abstract


So this guy actually observed remutation happening.. in the 50's haha
And practically no one has talked about it since

Shhhhhhhhh....
time to kick back and relax haha

Kelp!
Excellent idea about the horse feed outlet thanks -will definitely check on that
And interesting that about the broader nutrient spectrum due to sea water environment - makes total sense, as well as the growth hormone thing! Kelp does grow like crazy
HAve you heard of that 3d ocean farmer? http://greenwave.org/about-us/ cool thing theyve got going there

Cheers!

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Love that guys kelp farm idea, it's like permaculture of the sea

DonBrennon said:

Love that guys kelp farm idea, it's like permaculture of the sea

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Yes indeed it is!
I was especially impressed by the way they're making their system replicable and helping startups to get going - anyone up for giving it a go off a European coast? haha

calliandra said:

Yes indeed it is!
I was especially impressed by the way they're making their system replicable and helping startups to get going - anyone up for giving it a go off a European coast? haha

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Coastal living is way too cold for me, especially this far north, LOL

Some males I just could not bring myself to kill without seeing what they flower like


This is what's left of a wild thai plant I hacked up because it filled this tent after being in it for a couple of weeks. Left it with a couple of branches and some of the sacks are just starting to open. It's defo a male plant, but you can see some female flowers/pistels(2nd picture, herm?) I'm gonna let it run anyway, maybe I'll get some Male'd seed's............not sure what use they'd actually be, but learning is learning

Fat purple on the left, clusterfunk on the right, just gone in after the thai got hacked to make space

Same with this mystery Bodhi

Wild Thai male Guerrilla style, after hardening it off in the above tent, it got dumped in a discreet place. It's been there about a month, left to it's own devices. It's just gone through the stretch, cos you couldn't acually see it from where I took the photo a week ago and it's sack's are starting to open too.......................I had a closer look last night, when it was dark. It's well sheltered, but must be a hardy MOFO, cos we've had some extremes of weather and it's thriving, it also must have good pest/disease resistance. It's a stunning plant when you get up close and it's living in the shittiest conditions you can imagine.

Cobtastic, 4(ish) week from switch loving my light and can't wait to get the main tent ripped down and get rid off my 600w HID's
(I think my new homemade compost IS a large contributing factor, too, though)
Mystery Bodhi

Fat Purple

Afghan haze bastard

Ah, your plants, your lights, your soil, I just love your garden

The spot outdoor seems to be ideal, with that hedge keeping her back, and surrounded by other vegetation she probably had a little micro-climate effect going for herself - she's clearly happy despite those extremes, and if she's in your compost too I think it's not farfetched to say that also helps her resistance. Beautiful to see!

Two quick questions regarding the cobs - what's your spacing?
And what distances do you keep them from your plants?
Cheers!

calliandra said:

Ah, your plants, your lights, your soil, I just love your garden

The spot outdoor seems to be ideal, with that hedge keeping her back, and surrounded by other vegetation she probably had a little micro-climate effect going for herself - she's clearly happy despite those extremes, and if she's in your compost too I think it's not farfetched to say that also helps her resistance. Beautiful to see!

Two quick questions regarding the cobs - what's your spacing?
And what distances do you keep them from your plants?
Cheers!

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Thanks.................& humbled,

I've got 1 cob per square foot, but only driven at just over 1amp/38w and without lenses/reflectors concentrating photons and with the big heatsinks, find I can get them as close as 10" without problems, as long as a bud is not directly under the cob

Edit............I've found that, cos I can't move my light any higher now, I think I'd Idealy like about 15-20inch space above the canopy...............I hope that sativa's stopped stretching LOL

Been tryin to find plants that will grow in my shitty climate and to my surprise, these ugly lookin cherry tomato plants are putting out the tastiest tomatoes I've ever had. They've been totally left to their own devises apart from being watered on a couple of occassions, but they are in my good soil mix and they're F1 hybrids, so I'll have to re-source seed rather than using the seed from these, to grow them again next year. I'll take better care of them next year and try to train them up into proper plants with more space, than a perch on the top of my wall.