Soil Food Web Gardening with Compost Teas

Rrog said:

Growing can be so simple and easy if we just grow the way the plants and microbes have evolved over the last few million years. Nature has everything we need. No need for a bottle.

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AMen to that!

Cann, that's funny! I used to drink. There are a lot of folks here that would make the move to real soil if they were helped and confident

yeah I think confidence is a huge part of it...your average grower doesn't have anyone trying to convince them that living soil is the best way to grow with pics and data to back it up...but there are plenty of journals showcasing how amazing hydro is etc. or showcasing nute lines, blah blah. with epic pictures of plants to convince the newb grower that the best results will come from hydro.

all we need is a few folks who are doing this to start showing it off..should start to convert some of the masses. never going to the hydro store is a great hook as well. one trip for smartpots, bulbs, etc (if you are setting up a new operation) and you are set for months (maybe some pro-tekt if you don't have a source for agsil 16). that is something that 99% of growers cannot do. also the budget is a no-brainer...recycled living soil becomes almost free at a point, especially once you have integrated practices like bokashi, worm bins, sprouts, etc.

It feels great buying things that will be used by the plants and myself, such as sprouts, coconut water, aloe, fulvic acid (wu-jin-san), etc. also the ability to turn all of my food scraps into compost and eventually flowers is very rewarding. and my worms get fed in the process

once the system is up and running, everything works towards promoting health. the healthier I eat, the healthier my worms eat, the better quality my EWC is, the happier and healthier my plants are, and so on. slowly working towards the permaculture design in an urban setting...

This is it, exactly. Poor ol' natural soil has no commercial champion. Yet...

Brand EARTH brother!

I know all this is somewhat new to the cannabis scene, but I can't spread enough love to the folks out there growing true to the earth, but WORKING, HARD! To sell fruits and veggies for $5.00 a pound, or whatever it's worth that week.

Imagine if all you needed to do was grow 30 tomato plants in your backyard and could pay all your bills from the sale of those fruits, like most of the medical "farmers" do...

Cann very well put and I agree. Especially the 123, sounds sustainable but hard to bag as you point out. Sweat equity is a beautiful thing that is foreign to many modern humans, also hard to bag or we'd have a serious commercial champion!.

I was recently canned (no pun intended =]) from a synthetic hydro "medical" grow. It felt wrong and greedy selling that "medicine" to sick folks. I did good work and helped improve the quality of their "medicine" but all my employers cared about was yield. I wish I had not showed them so many techniques to yield more, more crap to profit off of for a "non-profit" producer. Anyway...

I am now employed at a start up medical producer who is big into TLO and living soil all organic. It feels good to go to work and grow as my experience and ethic has led me to grow for myself.

Danks to everyone on RUI keeping the organic chatter interesting and relevant, not just to our cannabis plants and gardens but to raising the quality and vibe of everything we do on our journey down this path. Danks for all the info and sharing, together we will get simpler and danker a bit quicker.

So I have been looking at whole house filters to get rid of the chloramine in my tap water because it is supposed to be bad for my microbial life in my soil. I have a filter now that fills a 55 gal and then I water from that. But I dislike it because I dont get much water pressure and can't use a wand to water with because of the lack of pressure. What I have come to find out is that many filters will reduce chloramine but most will not get rid of it totally and the ones that will are super expensive and the filters will need to be replaced often. So while doing research I came along a page and it was talking about vitamin C filters working better then other filters at getting rid of chloramine. I had never heard of a vitamin C filter so I googled it and what came up were vitamin C shower filters. Since I use amended soil I thought these would be perfect for using on my hoses before my garden wand.

My question is does anybody see any issues with using a vitamin C filter in my garden?

Here are some links to the filters and other info
http://www.natureswayresources.com/resource/infosheets/chloramine.html
http://www.pure-earth.com/vitashower.html
http://sonakishowerheads.com/inline-shower-water-filter.html

Hmm never heard of it either. But I do know some people add vit. C to foilar sprays, with positive results.

I recently bought a Berkley gravity water filter for emergancy purposes, and it's filter is made from D.E. (azomite)

It won't filter certain things, but will treat any water, without chemicals and make it safe to drink.

I bought a aloe plant from the nursery on Saturday. WHen making a Aloe juice spray does one just skin the pieces of aloe and mix it with water before foliar spraying??

NickNasty said:

So I have been looking at whole house filters to get rid of the chloramine in my tap water because it is supposed to be bad for my microbial life in my soil. I have a filter now that fills a 55 gal and then I water from that. But I dislike it because I dont get much water pressure and can't use a wand to water with because of the lack of pressure. What I have come to find out is that many filters will reduce chloramine but most will not get rid of it totally and the ones that will are super expensive and the filters will need to be replaced often. So while doing research I came along a page and it was talking about vitamin C filters working better then other filters at getting rid of chloramine. I had never heard of a vitamin C filter so I googled it and what came up were vitamin C shower filters. Since I use amended soil I thought these would be perfect for using on my hoses before my garden wand.

My question is does anybody see any issues with using a vitamin C filter in my garden?

Here are some links to the filters and other info
http://www.natureswayresources.com/resource/infosheets/chloramine.html
http://www.pure-earth.com/vitashower.html
http://sonakishowerheads.com/inline-shower-water-filter.html

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Over on Grasscity a few ppl say that Vitamin C works.
As far as I've learned you can bubble all you water like a week or so before you use it. That'll help.
And you can try filtering it thru a carbon filter. I've read that works a while back while I was ponder the same questions after reading True Living Organics.

I live near mountains and streams tho so I think my water it good. I sit it out over the course of the week and bubble it the day before I plan to use it, like I do with AACTs. Haven't had an issue yet!!

Also read that those filtes often add things to the water to make the safer to drink like RM said!

I have heard of folks using good EWC to neutralize the chloramine/chlorine. you sacrifice a small amount of the microbiology to the chemicals, but there is soo much activity in the EWC that the chlorine and chloramine get "used up" effectively. not sure on the actual science of this...but i believe MM was the one who said this. maybe check microbeorganics.com and see if he mentions it there...

rrog, does this sound right to you?

Well I know that humic acid and humus neutralize chlorine/chloramine and I use that in my compost teas and it is also in my soil. But the reason I am asking about this vitamin c filter is I want pressurized water so I can use a sprayer connected to a hose to water my plants so I don't have to bend over or move a bunch of plants to water them. I have a small boy with a kdf 85 filter and was going to get a whole house filter with a kdf 85 filter and may still but after doing some reading I found out that to truly get rid of all the chloramine with a catalytic carbon filter you can't filter over 1 gpm and to get good flow from a whole house filter you need 6-7 gpm

id be wary of vitamin c given that it's an acid...don't want too much of that in your water I wouldn't think. Maybe filter all your water into a large tank using RO, and then use a pump/hose setup to achieve pressure? make sure your hose is clean as well...most hoses aren't regulated and contain large amounts of BPA, etc. gatorhyde is a good brand to look at...

Cann said:

id be wary of vitamin c given that it's an acid...don't want too much of that in your water I wouldn't think. Maybe filter all your water into a large tank using RO, and then use a pump/hose setup to achieve pressure? make sure your hose is clean as well...most hoses aren't regulated and contain large amounts of BPA, etc. gatorhyde is a good brand to look at...

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My nightmare 3 years ago was trying to buy hoses that aren't toxic to water my vegetable garden, I found some, but they are crap! And like $10 more...

They lasted about half the season before becoming leaky pieces of shit.

I just bucked it up, and carry water in 3 gal metal cans directly from my small spring fed creek.

Wating is now a day long event. But no plastics/lead in my garden!

We shall see how many years of this my back can take...

Anything NSF 61 approved should be good for your garden.. Anything in the food / beverage industry must be NSF 61 approved.. So i'm sure they sell water hoses that meet NSF standards.

Still made from PVC.

Ill stick with my old school metal cans...

Although the very old method using bamboo would be ideal.

I once watched a whole documentary on primitive irrigation techniques. And the Chinese and Indian farmers were genius at diverting water through bamboo, where ever they needed it. Even drip systems like this.

Inspirtational to say the least.

Cann said:

id be wary of vitamin c given that it's an acid...don't want too much of that in your water I wouldn't think. Maybe filter all your water into a large tank using RO, and then use a pump/hose setup to achieve pressure? make sure your hose is clean as well...most hoses aren't regulated and contain large amounts of BPA, etc. gatorhyde is a good brand to look at...

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I may have to just test one out. I looked into Vitamin C and ph and in 5 gal tap water with a ph of 7.6, 2.5g of ascorbic acid brought the ph down to 6.2
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] [/FONT]Looked at my local water company to see what the average ph of the water was and it was 9.4 so it may actually help bring the ph down a bit.

Good looking out on the hoses Cann I actually got 1 gatorhyde hose but need to get a couple more.

oh wow...9.4 out the tap! jesus...

and interesting about the pH change...less noticeable than I would've imagined. I say go for it (on a test plant) and let us know how it turns out. curious...

bout to order another gatorhyde today lol time to start thinking about spring gardening

Oh man Cann, don't get me started, I'm going to be growing some crops for a local grocery store this summer (mostly cherry tomatoes/heirlooms) and its so hard to narrow down my seed order. But I found a new local composting facility that is making all sorts of interesting mixes like composted cow manure, limestone, gypsum and wood ash with options to add all sorts of goodies like greensand, kelp meal, azomite, oyster shells. I'm going to have a dump truck cover my driveway as soon as this snow is done and gone. Should be a prolific year in my medical greenhouse and vegetable garden.