I apply my last Karanja oil / aloe / silica foliar at ten day flowering. Absolutely, and your very welcome! We'd love to hear your No-Till experiences as you go along! IME its an ongoing process and give it a month or so before you start expecting to see zero gnats. A sprinkle of neem meal just like you're doing is the first step - continual neem/Karanja oil foliars once weekly (I always lightly hit the topsoil and there's plenty of drip from the plant anyways) and neem/kelp teas for the soil once weekly for 3 or four weeks. No more fungus gnats no more root aphids or pretty much any pest you could name. After this initial 'attack mode' you can switch to 'preventative' and for me this always includes the weekly foliar but just one neem seed meal application sprinkled into the vermicompost topdress at the beginning of each cycle and just two or maybe three neem/kelp teas for the whole veg/flower cycle- more won't hurt. Adding aloe to the teas and foliars is always a good thing. Pest free going on two years+ in the same notills that at one point all had fungus gnat explosions, root aphids by the thousands (tens of??!?) crops with PM, gifted cuttings infested with mites....ongoing thrips population...yep been through it all and I've found these few simple steps done continually and without falter combined with good compost and the few other additions I use to aid in keeping plants at 'peak health' all prove more than sufficient at keeping pests away from the garden and each and every item used for IPM doubles as excellent sources of plant nutrition and soil building. #Synergy
There is a difference between "No Pest Strips" and blue/yellow sticky traps. Topdress with a little neem and/or karanja cake. Takes care of gnats and won't hurt the worms. Warning: you may see a lot of mycelium formation after this lol.
That's been my experience exactly bluejay. When I first started using this soil I had a couple times where there were explosions of different organisms. Huge numbers of fungus gnats, then winged root aphids (probably both). Now my sticky traps are 100% empty. Almost weirdly deserted lol. Perhaps a predator moved into that niche? Populations always balance out over time I suppose.
After reading 200+ pages I had to join, the bottled nutes weren't working very well for me and are going into the trash, unless anyone knows something else they are good for, I got a couple boxes of amendments from BAS and hunted for the rest locally I had 4 seedlings that were looking bad, one is looking like some kind of mutant, I will be following this thread, thanks for all the knowledge. pics of the mutant and a weak looking seedling, both were planted at the same time, has anyone seen a plant that looks like that mutant, should I grow it out or yank it, I'm thinking grow it and see what happens. '
Just a random thought and comment. I've been using some old organic bird seed to make enzyme teas with pretty nice results. So the cool thing about SST/Enzyme teas is that you can probably use any seed for them. Also, I took the ground up seeds afterwards and added it to my worm bin, which the worms seemed to really like as well. Pretty nice stuff.
Thanks Blue! Just added some worms to my notill! Pretty excited. I have a thread in this section called "made the switch" keeping progress if your interested.
Wondering if you folks want to chime in what I can expect with these here ROLS with coco. Using 1/3 coco as soil media - what happens when this stuff starts to breakdown? I'm guessing as the fibres are consumed, a fair bit of K released is released, but the mix will get wetter, heavier and less able to wick. Anyone have any thoughts on how do you work an aging coco-based soil? Remix with more aeration? Leave it alone as the composting coco only gets better?
Congratulations on discovering simple and effective gardening like gardening was meant to be. Welcome to Grasscity Organics. You'll gond what you need here - and then some. J
I have not been around here much but I have done reduced-till, reused "soil" style gardening with a coco base instead of peat. It is acceptable and yes improves over time. It has been suggested to add more sulphur based amendments (gypsum or any thing that's stinking probably) since coco leaches minerals much easier. I suggest using coco as an ingredient among many others to start a compost pile, instead of just adding a few ingredients and planting directly. Coco won't compost very much similar to other types of plant matter it is more of a filler
I also am very thankful for Coot! Your the man! Thank you for sharing all your research and developments. Thanks for having the foresight to save seeds from when they were first available, and sharing. And thanks for pioneering unheard of methods of indoor gardening, against all norms.
Is it just an old wives tale that you should harvest during "lights out"? I wish this was more original.
Im on my 3rd grow Ive never had any pest problems that neem spray every 2 weeks didn't take care of . I've been gone for a week my SIP did a great job keeping my plants hydrated, unfortunately I stopped spraying neem after the first flowers showed up , I came home to a mild mite infestation on one plant in the back of my room Im still 3-4 weeks from chop is there any thing I can spray that wont negatively affect the flavor. I have orange and sesame oil Im thinking might be ok , or should I just pull the plant?
I can tell you, from experience, Spinosad will get rid of a mite problem late in flower without affecting the taste of the buds. You'll have to spray obsessively every 3 days for about 2 weeks to break their egg-hatching cycle.