High and welcome to my secret journal. or is it a journal of my secret garden? anyway...there are no secrets here! so let me start with the pipe of peace and pass it to the left im just gonna be using this journal to post my adventures in canna farming, using organic methods mostly inspired by BlueJay in the No-Till thread and Clackamas Coot with his amazing amount of information he shared. if it wasn't for them i would probably still be stuck measuring my PH and mixing overpriced bottled 'nutes'! so here's a big shout out to these two! this will be my fourth round but my first journal here on GC, i feel the community here is great, everybody is very helpful and always friendly This round will be my first attempt at a no-till set up. pretty much copying BlueJays and CC's recipe for the soil mix and watering schedule. so my soil mix is: 1 part Peat moss 1 part vermicompost 1 part lava rock to this basic mix i add (per CF) 1 cup Neem meal 1 cup Kelp meal 1 cup Liming mix (made of equal part of crab shell, gypsum and oyster shell) 6 cups Basalt rock dust 10 cups Biochar 1/4 cup Greensand (just cause i have it, so i just threw it in there for the heck of it) 1/4 cup Diatomaceous Earth (same reason as greensand) i am currently in the process of mixing my soil, about 80% finished and i ran out of kelp so i have everything on hold till i get more! MEANWHILE... earlier today i took clones, hopefully the soil will be ready by the time they root and are ready for transplanting! im working with Panama strain by ace seeds. i have 3 females that i ran previously but my results were far from stellar so i had not chosen a "keeper" out of the three yet. hopefully this time i will do a better job and can maybe decide if any of them are worthy of staying for another round. lighting will be provided courtesy of a Neosol 300 LED by Illumitex. my mother cab is lighted by a DIY LED that i built using the same LED modules found in the Neosol. ok enough talk! lets get some pics in here! so here is my flowering cab, roughly 3'x3.5' which i built out of metal shelf system i had laying around. i hung a waterproof tarp at the bottom to act as a "pool" of sorts in case the blumat system that i plan to install fails and floods. inside the tarp i have a 100gallon Geopot, its suppose to be square but at this size i guess ill have to settle with mostly square, lol! here is is 80% full: the Neosol 300 LED, looking like the mothership ready to beam those girls up! ok...lets meet the girls! 3 panama females (from regular seeds) dubbed #2, #5 and #10. #2 on the left and #5 on the right and #10 and after taking clones: on the last pic you can see the moms on the left and some kosher kush seedlings i popped about a month ago. I will use this bran of nutes: ok that's it for starters! i will be updating as things move along in my little magical mystery farm! thanks for taking a look! \t #LOG Clones - Panama 2,5,10
LMFAO...awesome intro. Oh man. I really look forward to reading along as you grow. The title. The ending...those nutes. Wheeeew.
Thanks for stopping by guys! 2 days later clones are all looking perky and happy! no dome, no misting no nothing! i used coots cloning mix 50/50 vermicompost and peat moss watered with kelp tea with silica and fulvic cuttings where placed in cups with the same tea for about 12 hours and then dipped in aloe vera before they went in the cups. humidity in the cab is around 55%, just cause that's what it is, i don't try to adjust it in any way. got some fenukreek seedlings pushing threw the mulch (extra shredded leaves from when i took clones) on my kosher kush seedlings. these where topped same day i took the clones have a great weekend everybody!
my kelp arrived and I am finally done mixing my soil! smartpot full, i left about 2 inch from the top empty to accommodate for future top dressing, mulching and whatnot. also went ahead and planted some live mulch. im doing IPM mulch on the perimeter of the pot with a mix of mint, cilantro and chives. this got sprinkled all around the edges of the pot: and a mix of fenugreek with crimson clover for the rest of the pot. think i put enough seeds?! LOL misted everything with water and then top dressed with a thin layer of vermicompost, which came with added 'helpers' ! i have some tree leaves i collected for dry mulch, gonna spread them on top of everything tomorrow, but i want to shred the leaves a bit as they are kinda large (5"-7" leaves...) peace!
mulch mulch much! so i got this bucket of leaves, i found them under a tree (duh) near the worm farm guy. he lives in the country so i took the opportunity to gather some. 30 minutes and a pair of scissors later between this and all the seeds i threw in there, i think im covered, literally!
Nice man. While your at it, might as well grab some duff too. If for nothing else, to mix in a soil or compost pile. This is what I look for if not full leaf mould.
next time ill make a trip to a forest and look for duff/mould as well. i took this in front of a house...one dog was getting all territorial on my ass and started running towards me and barking...i pretended i was a tree, turned my back to him and ignored him, so he left me alone...i feel pretty confident around dogs so i wasn't worried, but i wasn't gonna prolong my stay there either, lol! fun times! time to go finish up my flower cab! i need to cover the front and finish setting up the blumat system...
turns out the tarp i had planned on using for the front 'door' isnt light proof so i had to order another one. luckily there is a shop near me that sells tarps tailored to your needs, and its really cheap. so i ordered one out of some thick black fabric they had next to the tarp, should be ready for tomorrow. anyway...i also have taken clones of my panama girls to make seeds out of about five weeks ago. they got dusted with pollen i took from the one male i had in the panama batch. i don't have the luxury of being able to order seeds where i live, since here we get more then green tape if it gets caught by customs... i have about 5 packs of seeds i 'imported' when i was on vacation abroad and thats it! so im making seeds with any and every plant, lol! if i eventually find a good 'keeper' mom out of the three i am running, i will already have seeds from her! so this is day 36 since flip and about 10 days from the pollen chucking, im jsut starting to see pistils receding: The light is a DIY i built out of ilumitex LED modules (same modules used in my Neosol). 9x surexi chips @5.5watts each. i dubbed it the ScoobySol 50! have a great day!
some of the living mulch is starting to sprout, man i love the sprouting phase, its so magical! some of my clones started to wilt this morning, i really need to remember to make sure they have enough water EVERY day, haha...(lazy ass!). not to worry though, some H20 and about an hour later and you couldnt tell there was a problem! tarp door/curtain is up on my flower cab, still need to figure out how to lightproof the sides...im thinking maybe magnets! almost done setting up the blumat system, i got a 20 gallon res on the floor hooked up to a 10gallon tote on top of the cab. plan is to have a pump run water up to the tote every hour or so via the left hose, tote gets filled up to the drain which is the right pipe coming out of the tote. this should keep the water pressure going down to the blumat sensors constant. now all that's left is to plant the actual sensors in the medium.
today I inserted magnets into the seems of the front cover to lightproof the sides of the cabinet. before: and after: magnets are awesome!
hello why so much water? I use a five gallon res with Blumat maxis for six plants and only add a few gallons every few days or so. The Blumats use a lot less water. I think they claim 90%.
that's just the tote i already had and it fit on top of my flower cab, so i used it. it is true though that blumats use less water, and they dont get lazy (like i do!) thanks for stopping by edit: your post got me thinking, it might be kinda heavy when full, and although i think the cab can hold it i dont want to create too much stress on the structure. so i might lower the drain a couple of inches, maybe half way so it can hold no more then 5 gallons...
I guess you dont need to fill it everytime. I have two systems. One res and one on the pipe. I could never water these plants this well with my schedule. Good luck
the idea of having a two res system is that the bottom one constantly pumps water to the top res, keeping it at a constant level (which is set by the drain position. this causes the water pressure going to the blumats to always be the same thus keeping them correctly calibrated at all times. in a one res system the pressure changes as the level of water in the res goes down and this can affect the amount of water released by the sensors. also, a res that is constantly maintained full has less chance of getting air bubbles into the feed line. and of course there's the benefit of not having to lift the water above the cab myself
nah it doesn't work like that with Blumats. The sensors don't work on pressure, they work on suction. There isnt any pressure drop because its a closed loop system. Never had a problem and its been three months. No air bubble problems either. Basically no problems at all.
i'm talking about the pressure of the water going to the sensor, not the pressure of the water in the sensor. when the blumat sensor gets dry it starts opening a valve. the feed line goes through this valve and when it starts opening water flows from the feed line. if the res is low on water then the water flows a lot slower (due to lower pressure from the res) out of the feed line. the level of hydration in the soil goes down more untill the blumat opens the valve more. meanwhile the soil is getting drier then how you calibrated it. (Edit: I no longer beleive this is exactly true as the valve will just open more as the soil gets drier, but it might create more swings in the hydration levels. What IS critical is not allowing the elevated reservoir to run dry or the blumat sensolr can lose water if it kept in a dry soil for too long. Always check the water in the sensors if your elevated tank runs dry). i have blumats set up in my balcony containers for a couple years now. trust me i know why im saying this. another problem is if the res gets completely empty and air gets trapped in the feed lines everything starts getting out of whack. and usually needs a recalibration and possibly refilling the sensors if the soil gets too dry. its not a huge deal but the way i built it should prevent any of that from ever happening.
yeah I was gonna say... they should never be let to dry and the res obviously should not be left to go dry. I still have never seen any change in pressure based on water level. The valves open when the roots suck through the water via the ceramic tip.
All I see is green where i plan to grow a sea of green! lowered the drain fitting so the top res gets filled to only 5 gallons. now i don't have to worry if the roof will hold so i was thinking how to install a filter in front of the feed drain to block any particles that might happen into the res from getting into the feed line, blumats use such a narrow feed line (3mm) it can get clogged with the smallest debris. so what i did was to cut the cap base off of a 5 gallon jug, glued that around the feed drain in the res bottom. then i cut a hole in the cap and stuffed some aquarium filter material into the cap. once the glue dries ill be able to just screw the cap back on and the filter should cover the drain. no roots on the clones yet, but im thinking any day now...
another boring build-a-cab post... so my filter for the blumat drain is finished! screwed that cap on and voila! got me one of those blumat moister meters, this thing is basically a Tensiometer that works exactly like the blumat sensors. it measures the water potential of the soil in millibars. according to the instructions i want to keep it around 120mbar (lower numbers=soil is more moist, higher number=soil is drier). i just set up mine and it reads 22mbar which is very moist or wet. which is ok since i want to plant the blumat sensors tomorrow and the soil needs to be hydrated well for the initial setup. also got to test drive my new chapin sprayer...man that thing is awesome, im very happy i got it! also added a shutoff to the feed line and piece of clear tubing that will act as a gauge for the water level in the top res, and will also double as an air vent in case any air bubbles get into the line. so pretty much everything is set up, except for the actual sensors.