nice plants!! they look great and green! be careful adding the azomite to your top dressing as you already have it in your mix. it has all the minerals you need plus some aluminum lol so you only need tiny amounts of minerals and too much would be a bad thing. i was thinking about getting a mix so i could still get some benefits from the 6 row while keeping costs lower by cutting it with the 2 row. good thinking! just next time, use a coffee grinder or the like to mill it yourself. you'll keep a higher quality of enzymes than milling it all at once. sounds like you're getting some info from some good folks like wet dog. glad you're having a good experience!
The brew shop I went to had all their bulk grains at one price and I saw 2 row next to 6 row and thought Why not? And I was debating it in my mind about the milling and freshness. I will get a spare coffee grinder down the line but i used a good chunk of what I bought that day and the rest i sealed up and put in the freezer. The brew shop is 10 min from my house so I can always get fresh malt if I need it. My next step I think is coconut water, trying to source fresh young coconuts before I buy some power. Might go talk to the produce guy at my local grocery store he may be able to get me a case of coconuts. Damn I just realized how late it was (almost 2am here). I better turn in before my sentences start falling apart
east coaster eh? well see if they have Harmless Harvest in the refrigerated section by the vegan options. it should be kinda pink and is one of the few sources of coconut milk. have you tried to crack a coconut? lol if the barley is the same price for 2 and 6 row, get 6 because its better. have a good night!
Well I found some Harmless Harvest and the powder at the hippie run shop downtown. I hope the girls like it because that stuff is not exactly cheap, it is however tasty.
Its been a few weeks, been very busy around here between work and doing fall planting / bed prep. Just starting the third week of bloom and this crop is looking awesome. I havent noticed any mite activity for a bit so I am going down to only spraying neem once a week in my veg room and no more spraying at all in the bloom room. I have been keeping up with weekly EM1 coconut water (powdered) and aloe along with a EWC, kelp, EM1 and Fulpower foliar tea. I did notice that my topdress that I applied when I flipped dried out and got hydrophobic. I ended up picking up a bag of "Organic Mechanics" composted bark mulch. That stuff is very nice btw, very dark, rich earthy smell, and you could see fungal colonies (the good kind) throughout the bag. Needless to say I pick up a few more bags for the garden. I decided to pop a couple of extra seeds I had laying around. 1x G13 Labs Northern Lights X Jack Herer and 1x Dinafem White Widow. I also had a Original Amnesia that I was really excited for but alas it didn't germinate. I got the next batch transplanted into their 5gal bags w/ SS and promix and already starting to LST the Pineapple. In other news I only have 18 days unitl my 1st batch of ticture is done
your girls look great except in the first pic i see some yellowing or something on some of the leaves. is that phytotoxicity from sprays? also, i love EM1 a lot but you can over do it. i read somewhere that if you apply it frequently instead of just in the beginning and maybe once or twice in bloom, that the EM1 will dominante the microbial population and that while everything , works, you're not building the different levels of microbes. have you ever considered doing a 50/50 test round where you use EM1 like you're doing now and the other, just use EWC and compost?? i would love to see a comparison of that. i bet theres a few other curious souls who would lurk. theres also some debate of using wood chips or wood based compost because it can rob nitrogen from your soil. so if you see yellowing from the bottom up, you'll need to add some nitrogen like kelp, neem, or even some crab meal would work well. the reason people use straw and green manure mulch together is that you need some balance of carbon like straw or leaves and nitrogen like clover, comfrey, alfalfa, kelp, etc to keep the decomposition happening. what type of stuff are you doing outdoors? veggies and such? i've chopped and dropped all the veggies that are finished and sprinkled clover seeds in the areas i want to fertilize. i am curious what will happen planting the clover in the veggie garden. i read that it will die off if i cut it back before the flowers grow up to reseed. reading and real life application is not exactly easy though.
Dont know how it happened (probably too baked) but I uploaded a few old pics, But yes there is smoe yellowing and twisting on some lower leaves. I have been attributing that to the frequent spraying of neem w/ protek, probably too much protek. I am hoping that it will snap back now that I am spraying less. As for the EM1, I thought that dominate population of the microorganisms in EM1 was a good thing as it would prevent any bad bacteria from gaining a foothold. On my next run I should try that experiment, I could do a couple with weekly sprays and drenches, a couple with only light applications in the beginning, and some with none (only whats present in my VC compost). I had read some on that debate over wood mulch and what I concluded (although I could be wrong) was that wood is bad is the soil and not advised as mulch for the reason you stated of nitrogen leaching, but bark and especially composted bark was actually quit good for the soil. That being said the product I got is all composted bark, and the yellowing does not correlate with the application of the mulch. But I have been keeping an eye out for signs of nitrogen leaching. I grow veggies, herbs, fruit anywhere I have enough sun. I am on a small lot surrounded by trees so getting enough sun can be a challenge and makes for an interesting layout. Past couple weeks I have been cleaning up beds and planting white clover, oats, peas, and field mustard as a cover. The guy and the shop I went to said the frost should take care of the cover in the beds, otherwise i can just chop it before it flowers. He also recommended the white clover over the red because it is easier to "control". Got some garlic cloves planted so they should be ready in june. Also did a second planting of spinach, lettuces, carrots, and radishes. But this is the time of year that I can really see my kale start to flourish. I love kale.
you're right about the chips vs bark. i keep forgetting bark is ok. so i've been watching this 6 video playlist of the soil web called What is Soil? this part of the video explains dominance in soil and why you should have diversity. watch them all if you want! this is at the end so if you want to hear from the beginning, you gotta find the first video.
Great videos, i watched all six (need the 7th part) and it is really making me rethink the way I garden indoors and out, Like why the hell should I buy any amendments. I think I shall take a stroll through the local wood and snag myself a sample I can culture.
i'm soooo glad you enjoyed the video! i love elaine! someone wrote me trying to tell me why she is so awful but all they had to complain about is that she isn't using enough on application rates. everyone else i've showed the video to has loved it. for so long i've tried to understand and people have tried to explain and she made everything make so much sense in a lot of different ways.
I plan on starting a small farm in a couple of years and i am really glad I learned about this before I fuck up the land I plan to live off of. But it definitely flies in the face of everything we have been taught as gardeners/ farmers/ horticulturists, and especially weed growers. I guess we tend to think that our $$$ can solve all our problems
i thought it was really interesting how all that calcium had formed a salty crust in the soil. i asked if all this was true but they all said you have to add fertilizers and compost doesn't have enough to sustain plants. we haven't added fertilizers to our veggie garden. all we use is compost. its just not good compost so things aren't as good as they could be. this year though, i switched to bulk compost and oly fish compost and things really perked up! so i guess that whatever my soil is made up of plus compost seems to be the ticket outdoors at least. i've never added lime or anything really. i buried a couple fish heads but i didn't notice a difference in those spots in the garden. maybe next year. i've been reading a bit about biochar and terra preta soil. have you heard of terra preta?
Just watched her microscope test videos and she is like the Mr Rodgers of soil science. I have the same thing with the veggies, I think my compost needs to step its game up. I did however notice that certain veggies do better than others, like kale and broccoli, I am now thinking my bacteria to fungal ratio may be a bit off. Which I know realize is my own damn fault because I love my cultivator tool . We have alkaline soils in this part of MI and lots of clay (yay glaciers) so lime in potting mix was a bit new to me, here we use sulfur. I have only done some light reading on biochar and only the wikipedia entry for terra preta. I found both intriguing and strangely logical, definitely on my " to learn" list. I am experimenting a bit with my latest batch of compost, I added charcoal from my fire pit (I made it as hot as I could on my tine city lot) to my pile in hopes that it will become "biochar" but it sounds like it may be closer to terra preta. And I am thinking of changing the title of this thread to "My conversation with LadyLuckyBean" lol
yeah. it's pretty exclusive. i worked for a long time on my thread. been hoping this whole time to hear that i've done my homework but thats like screwing the pooch. i give up and am making new friends. you should come join my thread. i did a long write up on terra preta and all foks could focus on is that i am unmarried with no kids and i just recently got cats. no one gave two fucks about the info. i'd love it for someone to want to have a polite conversation without a bunch of rabble rabble rabble and hurt feelings.
So after watching the soil food web videos I am trying to reassess my gardening options. I dusted off my wife's old microscope and took some soil samples from around my property (only had time for the front yard). I did random sampling from my yard, front flower beds and the Organic mechanic mulch I recently purchased. Tomorrow I will do my back yard, driveway vineyard and grow room if I have time. Anyways results for the yard was all but dead (thanks "turf builder") but the flower bed was a bit better, but almost no fungus. The mulch however was teeming with life, bacteria, fungus, protozoa, and nematodes all spotted, I may have to buy more of this mulch. I also need to come up with a cover for my flower bed which has a bare patch where a burning bush died this summer, I don't think my oats peas and clover will add much "curb appeal." Now to watch a video on thermal composting, maybe it can help me get my pile going right.
I'm not as outgoing as @ladyluckybean, but i agree with her advice here as far as the teas and drenches and IPM go. Your garden is coming along well and it is always good news to have more organic growers. One thing about the foliar spraying is that the drip, especially when spraying often, will impact the soil microbes as well and have it's own separate down stream effects. No money for a microscope, but i liked the "stirring mac and cheese" analogy. Sounds like what i hear when i open the worm bin. Nice work so far and continued success in your endeavors.
A couple of updated bloom pics. At week 4 they are looking very happy and seem to be liking the Barley tea
No pics today but things are moving along nicely. The room is smelling hella dank and I have had to stake all my PE to keep the branches from breaking under the weight. The PE is already losing most of their fan leaves which is a bit early, I might be looking at a 50 day bloom time for these. I got some more clones going along with some ninebark cuttings for my yard, hell if I am going to pay $45 for a sickly plant @ english gardens when I can just clone one from my parents house. I got myself a leaf vac and already have a good size pile of shredded leaves and coffee grounds. And I am also happy to report that my hodge podge of a compost pile ( not nearly a pretty as LLBs) has been holding @ 135 - 140 for about 15 days now, not many people I hang out with get as excited as I do about thermal compost. This is also the pile that I threw a bunch of homemade char into. I am hoping I will have enough leaf mold / compost to at least cover all my garden beds