dubekoms

Well-Known Member
Also, Frank is doing just fine! Finishing up the last bit of scraps from the fairly large feeding about 2 weeks ago. The other bin got a big pile of leaves today from harvest, with some compost layered on top. The bin pictured here is going to get harvested in another 2 weeks, gonna let them scrounge the rest of what is in there. I'm gonna build a little worm trap to lure them into so I can harvest the castings easier. Will bait them in with their favorite in some fresh bedding... Avocado!

View attachment 4111548

Also I've been being tempted by Greenpoint Seeds @Gu~ with all kinds of delights lately! Soon I will be starting a Grow Journal for Greenpoint products done organic :fire::fire::fire:. Been very impressed with everyone's photos in the greenpoint thread and I'm very much looking forward to running some of this gear.... now to just make some room... and decide which strain to start first... and try not to buy any more (but likely will LOL) :wall::wall::wall:

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Dynamite Diesel still on the way haha...

:leaf::peace::peace::peace::peace::peace::peace::peace::peace::peace::peace::leaf:
Nice collection, highly recommend pioneer kush! Haven't smoked it yet but its looking superb.
 

ShLUbY

Well-Known Member
Nice collection, highly recommend pioneer kush! Haven't smoked it yet but its looking superb.
thanks! I got the pioneer as a comparative analysis kinda thing cause I'm going to try and make the cross myself with the Pre 98 Bubba that I already have and a stud from one of these packs :) I'm also gonna do a Gorilla Glue cross in attempt to make the tomahawk haha. Just for fun. It will be my first pollination experiment with cannabis, but I won't be able to do it until later this year!
 

dubekoms

Well-Known Member
thanks! I got the pioneer as a comparative analysis kinda thing cause I'm going to try and make the cross myself with the Pre 98 Bubba that I already have and a stud from one of these packs :) I'm also gonna do a Gorilla Glue cross in attempt to make the tomahawk haha. Just for fun. It will be my first pollination experiment with cannabis, but I won't be able to do it until later this year!
Sounds like fun, are you looking for any specific traits in the bubbaxstardawg cross? I have way too many seeds to run(mostly from greenpoint) to really experiment with pollinating. Maybe when I'm done growing out all the stuff I already have, which will be like 10 years from now lol
 

ShLUbY

Well-Known Member
Sounds like fun, are you looking for any specific traits in the bubbaxstardawg cross? I have way too many seeds to run(mostly from greenpoint) to really experiment with pollinating. Maybe when I'm done growing out all the stuff I already have, which will be like 10 years from now lol
not specifically, just seeing how similar the results are compared to the actual pioneer by using a select male from the greenpoint progeny and crossing it with the P98BK i have... even though it'll be a very small sample when comparing it to the greenpoint females.
 

ShLUbY

Well-Known Member
So just a little update... as I suspected, the initial recycled soil after being re-amended and composted maintains a slightly acidic pH through veg, and into the beginnings of flower. I tested the pH of one of the old mixes yesterday on day 1 of flower (March 25th) and it came in 6.7/6.8, leading me to believe that it's going to start climbing in the weeks to come. though they are in the pumice style SIPs, I plan to top dress them with a bloom mix of amendments and a light amount of compost, maybe 10-15% and the rest fresh peat moss and pumice. so probably like 10% compost, 20% drainage, and 70% peat moss. Then once every few waterings i will top water rather than sub-irrigate in attempt to rinse the acidity from the peat down into the soil. This should get me through flower hopefully, i have about 1.5 inches (~4 cm) of space in the top of the pot I can fill. I will be monitoring pH once a week from here on out with this run. There is also a plant with a brand new soil mix in this run too so it will be fun to see what happens between the two mixes (especially if both pH's remain in check). I'll try and keep the data logged in my notebook to reflect on the grow when it is all done.

I'll get some pics up of these plants over the weekend, they will be through their first week on Sunday. There are four brainwrecks, three in 5 gal SIP and one in a 7 gal SIP, and there is also the Pre 98 Bubba Kush in a 7 gal SIP which has the fresh soil mix so it will just get the standard compost + amendment topdress since it hasn't been recycled yet. Wish me luck my growmigos!
 

ShLUbY

Well-Known Member
Hey Shluby what are you using for a top dress during flower ?
for no-tills, whatever organic matter i have on hand: rice hulls, cannabis stalks (chopped into small pieces), leaves, the usual suspects. coco hulls, pine bark fines, and things of the like are also good.

regular pots i just use pumice cause its easy to recycle and i end up putting it back into the soil mix when necessary. pumice has much better integrity than perlite, but it still seems to break down a bit during the grows and in the soil tumbler. It's also easy to get off when a topdressing needs to be applied.
 

ShLUbY

Well-Known Member
im assuming those are more for the mulching application, are you adding any meal mix during flower for a nutrient bump or no ?
LOL sorry totally a stoner moment there and I misread/misinterpreted your question. bwahahahhahhhaa

to give you the answer you were looking for... topdressing in flower has been very beneficial for me for sure (before the pH problem anyway haha). What really worked well for me after trying a few different products was just an organic bloom/flowering mix. the npk was 3-7-4, and i'd use about 1/4c-1/3c per plant depending on how big they are... the biggest ones i'm convinced can handle 1/2cup easily. I always mix my topdressing nutrients into compost to make sure there are lots of organisms ready to break stuff down immediately. for 10 week plants i think a heavier does is fine as well. but just generally i would shoot for low nitrogen, high phos, and medium potassium. The product ive been using is made by Organically Done, and Dr. Earth offers one that looks really nice too, even includes benes, it's called "flower girl".

stay tuned because i actually have a topdress, though very informal, experiment happening right now with the three con cheese in flower. one pot contains insect frass and the bloom mix i was telling you about, another has a blend i made out of existing amendments that i always have (to see if i even need to buy the bloom mix), and the third plant has a combination of them both which meant a heavier dose (i wanted to push one a little bit). they're all running pretty evenly right now and i don't notice much of a difference at wk 4. i think wk 6 will be when i start to see which plant is doing the best.
 

Growitpondifarm

Well-Known Member
Great Info Shluby. I am new to this approach to growing and am trying to suck up as much info as possible. I had top dressed mine with neem meal, kelp seabird
Guano and some castings prior to flower but still saw a defiecency 4 weeks in. In my case this definitely could be related to a PH issue in my soil

Are you running RO water? I ask because I’m running filtered tap that I bubble for at least 30 hours but I think the large amounts of calcium in the water have a detrimental effect on my soil web
 

ShLUbY

Well-Known Member
Great Info Shluby. I am new to this approach to growing and am trying to suck up as much info as possible. I had top dressed mine with neem meal, kelp seabird
Guano and some castings prior to flower but still saw a defiecency 4 weeks in. In my case this definitely could be related to a PH issue in my soil

Are you running RO water? I ask because I’m running filtered tap that I bubble for at least 30 hours but I think the large amounts of calcium in the water have a detrimental effect on my soil web
i do run RO yes. is your water ground water or municipal water and do you know the PPM of your water?

you can upload a pic if you want for analysis! Have you updated your thread yet with the problem plant?
 

Growitpondifarm

Well-Known Member
I am running minicapal water I haven’t tested ppm as I have lost it since I stopped using chem ferts. But I do know it comes out of the tap at around ph 8.5, I’m assuming this is related to high calcium content. I run the water through a large charcoal filter but I believe the calcium stays present even after filtered. Typically when I water the ph is around 7.2-7.5. I’ll post a few pics in here later today, one is eating itself pretty bad bud development is coming along ok.
 

Growitpondifarm

Well-Known Member
Here is a pic of the plant in question, 37 days into flip give or take a day a day or two. Leaves definitely fading too early/getting a bit crunchy. Bud quality is still solid all things considered. I just don’t like having issues in flower 3B9F261A-1442-4CA1-91E5-404BD91BE979.jpeg
 

ShLUbY

Well-Known Member
Here is a pic of the plant in question, 37 days into flip give or take a day a day or two. Leaves definitely fading too early/getting a bit crunchy. Bud quality is still solid all things considered. I just don’t like having issues in flower View attachment 4113332
Definitely some K and P def, hard to tell if there are any N def because the K and P are getting severe, so yeah a topdress or even a more potent amendment mix would be beneficial for you for sure! but yeah, flower quality looks good and I don't think you're having pH issues based on what I'm seeing.
 

ShLUbY

Well-Known Member
So I got to do some scope work today in lab with the compost tea i brewed for about 40 hours here on campus. My scope work leaves a lot to be desired but I'll learn hahaha! @calliandra you can give me some tips and tricks for doing scope work... and maybe you could provide some insight to my poor attempt at capturing some of what's going on! I saw lots of protozoans zipping around and feeding around the aggregates, a few nematodes, bacteria... but not really any fungi. it was a EWC and composted manure tea with molasses so i wasn't really expecting much or any fungi. next time i'm gonna put straw in there, with some humic acids or fish hydrolysate and some kelp meal and see what happens! untitled008 (1).jpg untitled002.jpg untitled003.jpg untitled009.jpg

nice shot of a nematode in the last pic, it looks almost like an algae because it's green, but it's definitely a nematode, it was jerking around real well! Lots of fun to look into the stuff we can't see with the naked eye :)
 

calliandra

Well-Known Member
nice going! And great pix and focus for a first try! I'm really wowed! :D

the 1st 3 pix seem to be at 400x total mag - in that case, in the first pic you're seeing a bacterial aggregate and them working on some OM.

in the second, in the bottom right quadrant there's a longish rod, that's a proper Bacillus (=genus, not just the shape), the dots are distinctive and can appear in different places and numbers, but I don't identify beyond that, as it's just the kind of player that will give me the indication of yes, good one, want to have.
(and actually, the brown 2-part sticklike thing all covered in fulvic goo in the upper left quadrant could be a bit of hypha, one would have to focus up and down a bit to see if one can see the contours, septae, and the breakline on the ends - if it were one, it would be classed as a very beneficial one!)

Paired with the bacilli-chains on the 3rd pic, and the general appearance of the aggregates at lower magnification in the nematode pic (fuzzy wuzzy looking), we get a very rod-shape dominant picture, which I have found to correlate with the appearance of clearly anaerobic players, though there are still other bacterial morphologies around too. So in this combination you're looking at an ACT going anaerobic - you mentioned the protozoans "zipping", which is typical of ciliates (the oblong thing at the bottom of the nematode picture could actually be one too), and voilá your low-oxygen indicators when you see more than 1-2 per slide. ;)
So it always also depends on the context, the numbers.

If the compost you used did have fungal populations and you see none at all in the tea (even with molasses, there's the occasional strand), another indication of low oxygen having happened: anaerobic bacteria can chew up fungal hyphae within 20 mins - they just seem to dissolve - and the confirmed pictures I've seen of this happening always had rod-shaped bacteria dominating too. So that's possibly part of why you're not seeing any fungi too.
Welcome to the world of disenchantment? :bigjoint:
Now, getting the oxygen back in there (diluting with fresh water for example and bubbling that more) can turn the situation back around, putting the ciliates to sleep, awakening the flagellates and other species of bacteria that may originally have been around. It's a bit tricky, because you may need to add food again too. But by just replenishing dissolved oxygen, you can at least get it back into a state where you don't have to feel bad watering it in somewhere ;)

Yes! Definitely go for the fungal foods, my try with kelp and humic alone was eye opening and I look forward to doing more brews like that soon!
never again molasses and such!
I started with 1 cup VC + 1 tsp kelp (bubbled a while with the humic before adding the VC, though I may presoak a few hrs beforehand next time too) in 5L water, but added another tsp kelp later because not much was going on yet. So I ended up brewing 48 hrs but then had a tea with low counts of individuals but a fungal to bacterial mass ratio of 6.2 lol never seen that before (the VC was somehere at 0.7 iirc) Oh and that ACT really had an effect on the balance of one of my pot soils, raising fungal presence significantly.
The reason I'm telling you this is because we can be using way smaller amounts of food than are generally spoken of with regards to ACT. That 1 tsp is the actual recommendation we get in the course as our starting point for experimentation - finding juuust the right amount of our particular food (e.g. not "kelp", "THIS kelp"!) to get the kind of growth we want to see :) Too much food causes too quick of a growth spurt, using up oxygen faster and thus making dips into anaerobic phases more likely.

Haha, fun stuff!
Cheers! :blsmoke:
 
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Growitpondifarm

Well-Known Member
I agree Shluby, thanks, I’m not sure if I drop dressed with some kelp and neem now it would even have time to kick in before chop but I’ll do it anyhow.

I had a tea brewing today so I gave this plant a bit of it too, see how she responds
 
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