Plan your work; Work your plan.

Hi!! I'm ladyluckybean and I'm learning about No Till growing. The title of the thread is a coot quote I really loved and decided to design my new thread around the concept. Not all of the advice that I got came from coot, but some other great advisers are GiMiK, jerry111165, chunk, pakalolo, thomas jefferson, wetdog, mainah and many others of the GC Organic community.

This thread wasn't designed as a manual on how to do what the no till thread is teaching but almost all of it came from leaders and respected growers who grow no till or recycle soil so for the most part it's just about the same thing. I took bits and pieces of info and put it together to show my plan of action and what I've learned since joining here in April. I have been taking notes I'd like to share as well as sharing my garden with you fine folks! I've learned so much the past few months and had many questions answered by reading and lurking these people posts.






What I Got Under The Hood
I have storage room in my garage with 2000w HPS/MH in a Raptor Dual Bulb hood with four 20 gallons on portable SIPs.. I have a 4x4x4' cab with a 3x3 low tide tray from botanicare used as a SIP for my cloning needs and small ladies. This little room uses a 600w hps..

Mothers, seedlings and clones start out in the cab.
When they're ready, They will go into their final container so there's only one transplant.


Strains for this round include:
The One x Eminem
Blue Orca x MTV
3Elders
Pimp Daddy Purp x Sour Bubble

 

Soil Recipe Used
The soil mix I'm using is basically BAS's recipe and watering schedule.
â…“ each Sphagnum peat moss, pumice, oly fish mountain compost
½ cup each per cu ft kelp, crustacean or crab meal, and neem cake meal
1 cup each per cu ft glacial rock dust, basalt, gypsum, CaCO3 lime at 93% calcium carbonate to replace the oyster shell flour

I don't use compost teas, bottled organic fertilizers or sparkle trich spray either. I use typical no till stuff like aloe, silica, fulvic acid, malted barley flour, kelp teas, stuff like that. I'm pretty big into top dressings and like to use comfrey, EWC, compost, chop and dropped living mulch, nettles, along with the kelp, alfalfa, and neem meals. I also use red wigglers in my soil to help till and add fresh castings to the topsoil.


Get ‘er Dun!
I mixed this up on a tarp using Jerry's method of spreading out the soil one foot deep then applying amendments evenly across instead of my usual dump in a pile and mix technique. I get a bucket and add the entire amount of kelp, neem, and crusty meal and mix well. Then in another bucket I add all the rock dusts and mix well. then i apply each bucket for a more even mixture. I think it's easier to mix this way. I like to mix with my feet and a garden hoe at first, then grab one end of the tarp by the corners and lift up trying to flip the soil to mix the bottom up towards the top. You go to all four sides doing this, then mix with feet and hoe again. Repeat some more until you're exhausted. This is the time you go and have a safety meeting to recharge for another mixing. To gauge how evenly I've mixed the soil, when I'm spreading out the stuff for the base soil, I put down peat, then compost, then aeration in layers. Then when I'm mixing, I can tell how well it's mixed by seeing how even the pumice is distributed.


Then I put it into 3 garbage cans and dumped some EM1 on it and let it get nice and warm. When it cooled off, I filled my containers leaving 3-4” available for my mulch. Then I added crimson clover and hairy vetch seeds, couple handfuls of kelp, crusty meal, a half handful of alfalfa, insect frass and then I covered with a ⅓ cubic foot of EWC that had cocoons and live worms hatching. Then I placed timothy grass 25% and straw 75% on top super thick. I wet everything down with water and then placed on SWICKs/SIPs.


Here is Coot's advice on soil mixing:
15 c.f. can be mixed easily in a basement. The tarp is a very, very good idea. I use a garden hoe to mix soil on a tarp. One suggestion that I would offer is to mix your amendments with the Worm Power vermicompost first and then add your HYDRATED sphagnum peat moss.
Trying to correctly hydrate a mixed soil is the basis of many complaints on cannabis boards about what a PITA mixing you own soil can be. What I do is take the sphagnum peat moss and put into a large tub and cover it with water. As it begins to absorb the water take your hoe and break it up. This usually takes a couple of days so patience is a virtue.
I store peat moss in a big storage tote, initially hydrate it with water plus aloe and with the lid on it stays nice and moist. Peat especially if dried out in the compressed bale is hydrophobic so you want to get it well hydrated, not soaked, when working with it and like CC said it really is a two day process. I also like to store my compost in a big smart pot already preamended with the goodies.


So I have the peat moss and compost on hand and several bags of lava rock plus a nifty 2gal paint bucket and an empty 45gal smart pot. I'll take a scoop of peat then a scoop of a compost and top it off with what usually ends up being less than a scoop of lava rock....get my hands in there and mix it around before repeating the process until the smart pot is filled up - now I have 7cuF of primo potting soil that cost me less than $10/cuF ready to go at a moments notice.

 

SIP or SWICK Design
My SIPs use pumice to wick water up to the smart pots. I used mortar pans from home depot and furniture dollies from harbor freight. This way i can move them around easily since pumice is lightweight and it raises them up quite a bit to save on bending over and back pain. I can sit on a stool easily if I need to when I'm working in the garden. The trays can be moved around to keep the floor clean as well as take out of the room to the driveway to hose down for IPM sprays. (I hate spraying in my room because the panda film gets gross with oil as well as the floor.) The pan can hold up to 9 gallons of water at full capacity. To get my sips going, I filled it up so the bottom was sitting in water, set the pots on there with dry dirt,, then the rest of the container will eventually be evenly moist.

Worm Bin Design
I have a vertical flow through worm bin using a rolling 55 gallon garbage can. I just started it and I didn't get very many worms at first but i've added since then so it only recently “started”. The bedding is an old soil mix containing 6-5-3 of calcium carbonate, SRP, and gypsum, azomite, fish bone meal, kelp and perlite that has been sitting for a year moist most of the time. On a side note, I recently found some pdfs talking about how SRP that comes in contact with calcium carbonate which is not only in lime, but vermicompost as well, somehow through a reaction will only be a calcium supplement only?! Well any ways, that soil mix is in there about ⅓, then ⅓ year old leaves and coco chips, and ⅓ oly fish mountain compost. I added some glacial rock dust and basalt, additional kelp meal, crustacean meal, neem cake meal, alfalfa, horsetail, comfrey, and nettles too. I smell the bin often to make sure it doesn't get sour. It did in the beginning so I let it dry out and now it's been fine. I don't know much about vermicomposting and that is a goal of mine to complete.

 

My IPM Plan
Each fertilizer in the soil recipe will boost plant health and help ward off insect attacks, as well as silica and aloe that is added to each foliar and watering. SST has chitinase to break down the crab meal's chitin into chitosan. EWC also help ward off mold and pest attacks if it is of high quality. Kelp helps reduce stress and contains gibberellins which acts as a insect growth regulator to keep eggs and larvae from hatching and moving on to the next lifecycle.

I plan on using Azamax and JMS Stylet Oil separately and tank mixed depending on age of plant. seedlings and young tender plants get only Azamax but as they get older, they get Stylet oil added too. Azamax is enhanced by the stylet oil and so you can use it at half rate for a full rater effect. There are other suitable products you can use for IPM like the famous neem oil or spinosad. What you pick has to target that pest, have a low impact on the environment and beneficial bugs/ pollinators causing the least harm to us. You should take a gander at this website to learn why IPM should be an essential part of your grow. http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/GENERAL/whatisipm.html

 

What I've Learned So Far
One of the things I had a hard time accepting was that worm casting will solve most organic problems. I didn't realize how many things they have; which btw is everything: fulvic and humic acids, calcium carbonate, enzymes, pest fighting capabilities, and probably a lot more that I'm forgetting!

ladyluckybean, on 08 Oct 2015 - 10:31 PM, said:
Why bottled fertilizers are not beneficial
when you do stuff that kills the microbes, you are now in control of feeding the plant. The
plant needs certain nutrients at certain times throughout the grow and we do not know exactly what it needs. Microbes do.


why do you put the plant back in control?
Healthy plants don't need toxic chemicals to grow, have the proper balance of nutrients, so they taste good and satisfy hungerand also become resistant to insect and disease attacks.



Your plants do not grow on NPK alone. There are 42 different nutrients that plants use. How do bottled nutrients deliver that? All of these fertilizers leach down into the ground water. By using rock minerals and compost you can't help eliminate that, feed and build the microbiology of your soil which in turn cycle nutrients from your raw inputs like kelp, crab, and rock minerals. Microbes love minerals and minerals have loads of nutrients in an unavailable form.


There is no lack of food on this planet. Politics keep food from people who need it. Monsanto perpetrates these lies but it's all politics and sanctions instead so GMO crops
are not needed at all like they say we do. Lack of clean water is what we need to worry
about. Ohio has no clean drinking water so don't drink outta the faucet when you're in the Midwest.


Elaine put wheat seedlings in dirt that has no biology in it from heat sterilization and it only survived about three days. No life in the soil and you can't grow a plant. Add only bacteria and plant dies. Only add fungi and it dies. Bacteria and fungi both and the plant dies. So you need the soil food web.








Bacteria and fungi grow on organic matter but exudates are what feed them. Photosynthesis is what drives the exudate process which feeds the bacteria and fungi in the rhizosphere so the more diverse biology makes for better photosynthesis which
in turn pumps out the exudate which feed the plant more.



What is a exudate? They're mostly sugar, proteins and carbs. The plant in return expects
nutrients in a trading back and forth relationship. So if you plant needs colbalt, then it puts out specific exudates that attract that type of bacteria. If it needs nitrogen, then it attracts that bacteria that feeds nitrogen. So having a balanced diverse microbial community of different levels of microbiology is essential to feeding your plants. So don't measure nutrients but measure the microlife. So the plant tells the microbes everything it needs in the perfect amount. How easy is that?!


So as protozoa eat the fungi it releases the nutrients that the fungi ate in a soluble form
and each microbe likes certain nutrients. So having high quality compost and castings
is essential to growing plants with ease. So compost and castings. Compost and castings. Repeat it after me!! This protects plants from fungal pathogens and insect attacks. Mother nature is trying to tell you that something is wrong with the microbes. Elaine didn't say this and this is my theory but using a mix of compost and castings would give you the best diversity of micro life IMO.






Microbes live in the rhizosphere which is the area surrounding the roots. Disturbance kills
microbes like illing. Using cover crops increases the rhizosphere and the clover pump out exudates which is what sustains and establishes the microlife in your no till pots.



So what happens when the biology gets unbalanced? Fungal diseases and pathogens. So we want the goldilocks bowl of porridge but microbes instead. Nutrient cycling is
not complete and the food web gets out of whack. Just like endangered species being lost and throwing off the web of life. So you can do this yourself using a microscope to get a general idea of whats in your soil. While its not required if you're using good compost, it can be fun to watch and give you a general idea about the health of your soil.



So that is part one and two of elaines lecture. I might go out later to take pics. I really
do not like taking pics if anyone hasn't noticed. However when the buds start, that is when I really enjoy showing off the ladies.


that looks right when i copy pasted it and then i even went through and made all those weird breaks go away all for not. poo.




ladyluckybean, on 12 Oct 2015 - 11:03 PM, said:Soil Food Web Ingham lecture part 3





Bacteria and fungi form a massive wall around the roots because plants feed them.
Protozoa and nematodes are attracted to the large number of prey: bacteria and fungi.
Because nutrients are so much higher in bacteria and fungi than their predators, excess
nutrients are released but in a plant available form.



A healthy food web will suppress disease, retain nutrients, nutrients available
at rates plants require eliminating fertilizer leading to flavor and nutrition,
decompose toxins, select against weeds, and build soil structure.



Build Soil Structure
The bacteria makes glues to bind clay, silt, sand and other particles of the soil. This
way bacteria doesn't get washed away with heavy rains so they cannot be
leached. This is how we can prevent leaching. Now that the bacteria has a
source of food, it proliferates.






This glue though binds the soil if you just have bacteria aggregates so you need
fungi to bind the micro aggregates of the bacteria into macro aggregates of
fungi. This creates the structure you see in good compost.








Bacteria and fungi together form lichens which is what is weathering the rock minerals and silt,
sand and clay using enzymes the lichen creates into soil. Soil structures
reduces water use by up to 70% and increases crop yield of double, triple and
even quadruple depending on how good the soil structure is. Even in places with
no rains for 5 months, the soil structure will hold the dew in the morning to
sustain the plant depending on soil structure. Places in Australia haven't had
rain in years and dew point is what maintains vegetation.



With good soil structure you allow the roots to grow deeper and find sources of
water and maintain water when you irrigate. With good soil structure and proper
biology, you keep the soil aerated and healthy roots surrounded by biology
leaves fungal soil diseases away. Weeds do poorly if you get a proper food web
which she explains later on.








Part 4
Tilling actually causes compaction due to the rototillers. Water moves down into the
tilled soil but since the tiller only goes so far, the soil structure changes
and the water will not go into the different soil structure giving you water
logged soil. Puddles equal compaction. This leads to anaerobic conditions
leading to rotten egg ammonia smell when you dig into the soil. Lack of oxygen
is the biggest factor to not having a thriving population.






What is the definition of soil?



The mineral compensates that comes from these are from the rocks that form into
sand, silt, and clay. The factors of these depends on the parent material. Natural
resource conservation service will have this information by providing your
locations and address.





Don't call it dirt. That's a four letter word. Dirt is dead. Soil is living.






So depending on the parent material, there is different types of soil called flocculation.
Some have more magnesium and some others have more calcium. Clay particles lay
flat on top of each other in high magnesium soils compacting so there is no
space between them for air, water or roots. So if you want to flocculate those
clays to open up so you have to increase the concentration of calcium so the
clay platelets repel each other so they make air pockets. But what releases the
clay in the air pockets is the fungi by creating the large fungal networks in
the soil. They are basically made of calcium so when it pushes its way into the
clay, it connects and breaks open the space and make available the calcium. So just
adding calcium does not work. You need fungi to break through and make it
available to break those clay particles apart.





In poor soils by adding fertilizers and organic matter like compost, you can increase
the soil's exchange capacity to increase the nutrients in the soil and have
biology there breaking it down into plant soluble forms. Guess, what?! Its gets
better over time. So if you got crap soil, over the next several years, adding
fertilizers and compost to the soil will improve the soil structure into good
quality soil that contains the calcium and magnesium as well as other nutrients because the biology is there to make it available and has the soil structure capable of making it
thrive. the soil structure is there to maintain water and increase root growth.




ladyluckybean, on 14 Oct 2015 - 08:10 AM, said:
ok, so i watched part 5 & 6 and there is a ton of info and graphs and everything so if you want the full story you'll have to watch the videos.








Fungi and bacteria are responsible for the decomposition and the release of plant nutrients. However, they have different roles in the recycling of nutrients due to their different choice of environments in the soil and the different types of organic matter they consume. So the balance of fungi and bacteria in the soil is important.



The higher the populations, the healthier the soil. There is a shift in dominance from bacterial to fungal in fully functioning ecosystems. In highly productive agricultural soils the fungal-to-bacterial ratio will be about even. However, grasslands tend to show bacterial dominance. Old growth forests have an extremely high fungal dominance. Take note of what types of vegetation you find in these areas:


-trees, shrubs: rhody bushes, strawberries, forest floor vegetation
high fungal and acidic ph preference



-prairies: flowers, herbs, vegetables
more even ratios and neutral ph preference



-grasslands: wheat, alfalfa, etc
high bacteria dominance and alkaline ph preference



PH, temperature and soil moisture affect the ratios and activity of the microbial population. It has been found that a low pH is associated with fungal dominance, whereas a high pH might be related to bacterial dominance. Certain conditions need to be right for certain populations of microbes to thrive and if its not the right temp or ph, then that populations goes dormant and will awaken when conditions are right again. Fungal and bacterial fluctuates so measuring your ph is not useful and only going to be confusing using organic methods.


The quicker your decomposition and nutrient cycling processes in your soil, water retention, yield and quality improve while effectively controlling pests and diseases. So if you double your population of microbes in your soil, then your yield should double, over time as it builds up, your yields increase as much as quadruple, quality, flavor and nutrition goes up and a lot less input is needed. Does this sound familiar to anyone?



So why are we so focused on kelp and alfalfa teas when we should be adding that as a top dressing to increase microbial decomposition and activity to make the tea in our soil so to speak?! I'm guessing that in the beginning we need the extra input of available nutrients while our population builds but if we use this too heavy, then it doesn't have the plant relying on the microbes to break down the kelp to feed the plant and instead has me brewing and storing kelp paste when i could be doing something else.




















One of my grow philosophies have changed recently. I'm pretty big into brix growing, researching focused mainly on plant health although I am very curious about some of the testing they do; specifically plant pH. Well, one of the main things you see mentioned in brix is the use of soft rock phosphate. I was reading somewhere and coot said that when SRP comes in contact with carbonate, then it makes P in SRP unavailable which kinda defeats the whole point eh? This recipe has plenty of phosphorus and many feel a low phosphorus soil is much better than one who uses high P inputs like bone meals. This causes the myco's to fall dormant and not feed the plant right.


Also, in my reading I was trying to find out why coot used to post about the benefits of lacto serum, EM1, bokashi, FPE's a lot and now he doesn't use or promote them at all. I really enjoy making and using some of these things as it's fun to create stuff. When I was making CalPhos from crab shells, when you add the vinegar, the reaction of the two meeting causes rapid boiling and I was easily amused by this. Well, all I could find of him directly saying why he doesn't like them is that FPE's degrade enzymes. It wasn't elaborated on further and I haven't searched for anything more since reading that. I do have a theory that he doesn't recommend them anymore because no till gardening doesn't need them but I don't think anything harmful can happen.


SST, FPE, bokashi, EM etc is all part of korean farming techniques for a long time, which are used to revitalize soil in countries that have limited resources to fertilizer due to financial situations of these poor farmers. They use fruit, herbs, and plants like garlic to make fertilizer and pesticides to use in place of products that we currently use. So the whole point of me telling you this is that so you can see how this farming is successful. Korean farming is used to revitalize depleted soil and inoculated with organisms capable of releasing minerals in the soil using fertilizers that are already plant available.


So this is more about feeding the plant due to low quality humus, tilling, low microbial activity. None of this is an issue when doing No Till gardening and that is why I think that coot no longer promotes the use of these things. Don't get me wrong, this creates some beautiful plants and if you're into that style of gardening, it works well but you're in control instead of letting the microbes be in control. You will learn over time that there are many different styles of organic gardening and they use different techniques to solve issues they face. So no till growing is a style of organic gardening and the things they use in this style of growing are beneficial in other types of growing but utilized best when doing no till as a complete program. No Till growing outside of a canna forum can be used for a lot of styles of growing like high brix, korean farming, natural farming, etc and is not limited to just the way we do it. So since we are growing in a well amended soil with quality humus, stuff like lacto serum, FPEs, are not needed to feed the plants but they're not bad; just for a different type of growing.


I've read over a third of the No Till thread and the first 100 pages is amazing and then after that it gets repetitive. I encourage you to sit down and start reading at least the first 100. It goes by pretty quick and can get fairly addicting to read. Other good threads to check out if you're new to this and really helped me is the SST thread and Kelp thread. I am also going to list some links to my notes and a printable schedule for watering and such I made specifically for top dressing SIPs. This way you can follow along and see exactly how it works. I think some people reach for the bottle because there is a schedule telling you exactly when to do what so that is comfortable and safe. Well, I think this is even easier than using bottles due to not being in control and letting the microbes figure it out! All of this info below was obtained from the No Till thread. If you want to see the exact post where they're talking about it, I suggest you copy paste it and use google to find the page with that exact matching words. I didn't include that when I started and realized that would've been nice. whoops!!

 

Links To My Personal Notes From No Till Thread
These links will continually be added to so check back if you are so inclined. They're really messy. Sorry.



Watering, Foliar and IPM Schedule
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18Wf-1H5C7T...
Click link and print it out.


How To Reamend Your No Till Containers https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WmvEDksIhzDcvr...
Posts talking about reamending.


Bugs and IPM
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fyBJkPSXRqUyFL...
Don't worry, there's good bugs too.


Recipes For Everything
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10MOovc6ul7gjGl...
All the tea recipes, IPM recipes, measurements for application.


Why You Do NOT Top, Pinch, FIM, Snip, Cut or Snap The Plants But Instead Use LST
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W98FskpKBr2kqQ...
Info on training plants for optimal growth and health.



SST, Enzymes, Aloe, Coconut Water, Fulvic/Humic Acids, Silica Misc Posts
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qVfuRI_6t23Y3L...
Misc posts on commonly used additives used in no till gardening.



Why Worm Poo Is For You And Solves Most Problems
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-eMqvnSmSi7lFb...
This is the most important thing EVER.


Misc Grow Room Advice
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lVqjFemXSy7qJX...
Just what it says. Info on how to set up room, smart pots sizes, bulbs, etc.


Mulch and Cover Crops
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lwj6QODFHIARZm...
Various posts from No Till and somewhere else on mulch.


How Plants Communicate With Each Other
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VNvwD3NyECJbVA...


Various Amendment Info
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RUHpq5acfTF70T...



Suggested Reading and Other Sources
GiMiKs Library of PDFs is a great source. Tons of top notch quality information on everything you could possibly think of along with several books that are must reads. I have this bookmarked for easy access. hint hint! This link is at the bottom of the list but certainly not least.


Also, Symphony of the Soil is a documentary that talks about the soil food web, plant communication and plant health. You can find it for rent online at Amazon and other places for around $6. Perfect for someone who is new to organics or wants a beautiful HD nature video. Seriously, butterflies will leap out at you. I was mesmerized and have been raving about it for over a year!. Just amazing and everyone who's watched it, has had nothing but great things to say.


When searching for what a product contains like Mighty Wash, type in the name of the product and have a colon afterwards then msds so it looks like this mighty wash:msds and you can find out everything that is in that product.


Good video of the adam dunn show of coot talking about living soil, pH, CalMag, FPEs, Humic and Fulvic Acids and a good general idea of what living soil entails. The Rev and Kyle Kushman talk earlier; ignore that. heh.




Good websites to check out
http://remineralize.org
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/
www.theunconventionalgardener.com
Acronyms collected from Gandalf
http://forum.grasscity.com/topic/1322727-Organic-G...
Threads about different subjects
http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-medical-marijuan...
http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1299862...
http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1245650...
http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1275083...
http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1151159...
http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1339168...
http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1277064...
http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1172831...
http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/980786-...
http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1168520...

 

Thanks for watching my show!! I hope you guys enjoy my garden!! I'm excited to show what I've learned so far and to continue learning about how this all works. I've been growing organically for a year but just now feel like this puzzle is starting to come together. Don't hesitate to ask me questions on what I'm doing. I'm not an expert by any means. I just share all the info I'm reading but implementing what you read into growing is more difficult sometimes than it sounds on paper.. Sometimes, hell a lot of times, I don't explain things thoroughly so ask away. Lots of good people have contributed to these notes I've copy pasted. People quoted were mostly CC and BJ, but there are several from GiMiK, thomasjefferson, and jerry.






Thanks to those who contributed to the No Till thread.


Most of all, thanks to the people who've given me help, friendship, and guidance. Your personal interactions and advice have meant a lot!!!!!

 

We're getting some light bleaching from the 600w hps bulb.

 

Some other plants growing right now.




She's shy.

 

YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i can't wait to show you some flowers!!

 

imagine how i felt when i first got here? really wish this was my first stop in choice of venue but now i have a TON of catching up to do and learning everything was tough for me so if this can help someone else, i would like to think all this collecting wasn't in vain.


thanks so much for your help with growing and being cool like a cucumber.