Mephisto Genetics Cosmic Queens in not quite living soil

[calliandra]

Ihave to ask you a question, what is your opinion on trace minerals, basalt or azomite to work into soil? I'm still trying to learn and this is my last purchase until I'm ableto use all the other stuff I already have.

I haven't reached a conclusion on this yet, but I suspect we could get our mineral part of the mix simply by adding a few handfuls of the next best soil we can dig into (as long as it's not anaerobic or heavily fertilized, we don't want to be introducing unwanted elements that could cause havoc in our mix - whereby, with a really good microbial herd, they could handle that too).

Basically I think we're all completely confused by the chemical-think of the past 60 years, and the fear of scarcity it generates in our bones - and I totally count myself in with the crowd on this and keep stumbling over it!
Plus of course there is environmental devastation, which forces us to doubt the integrity of any inputs where man has been actively influencing.
Stories of people telling me how alpine herbs no longer have the healing power of former days - no agriculture up there beyond light sheep or cow grazing, along with some maintenance to preserve the cultivated ecosystem that has arisen over the ages of this mode of alpine land use! Up there, damage is being done by the mere settling of pollution dusts we're blowing into the air...

I opened an Instagram account recently to see how Mountain Organics is faring with his system (the system I'm leaning on to get my soils going), and LO! He's skipping just about all the amendments he used to recommend, depending mainly on his compost to have the right microbial profile, and mulching plant material back to the soil.
My opinion: yes! That's exactly where I want to head myself!
But you can only pull that off with a really good compost, and finding a trustworthy source (or taking the time to learn and make our own, with all the conundrums on inputs coming back boomerang style to haunt us) is the core issue.
But the reason I'm mentioning it: he makes the mineral portion of his mixes with volcanic rock dust along with pumice for aeration

Here's his recipe along with his reasonings:

Here’s the mix I used and this amount fits a 100gal pot perfectly.
4 cuF compost (@malibucompost )
3cuF CSPM (peat moss)
3 cuF pumice (lava rock) —— alternative: 4cuF
1.5 cuF biochar ——-alternative: .5cuF
40lbs rock dust (volcanic)
Worms (10 worms, 100 worms or 1000 worms, add more if you want them to turn your soil over (improving it) quicker, or add less if you don’t mind taking the slow road).

First thing you’ll notice is the lack of traditional ‘amendments’ which I think the industry has exemplified well beyond their importance for no other reason than to sell you yet another ‘thing’ that you MUST have and add to that organic gardeners (cannabis and otherwise) to a certain extent like to give ‘magical’ qualities to this or that amendment telling everyone that “X” amendment is their secret weapon and makes their product ‘the best’.
Well, it’s all bullshit you see, the real magic is in the quality of the humus/compost and the diversity of soil LIFE it brings to your potting soil mix and in the MINERALS aka degraded rocks aka ROCK DUST because that’s the backbone of soil, of life, that is where ALL soil nutrients originate from that are now cycling within plants and animals and our food and plant medicine supply - ROCKS and MICROBES.....an additional handful of alfalfa or neem or kelp or crab shell or comfrey or insect frass or bat shit or friggen feather, bone, or blood meal isn’t going to make or break your soil one little bit. Somewhere along the line we’ve minimized the importance of HUMUS (aka ORGANIC MATTER aka COMPOST/CASTINGS) and ROCKS (aka MINERALS aka ROCK DUST) and increased the importance of a laundry list of random ‘designer amendments’ which is just all backwards.

- MountainOrganics on January 22, 2018

Nothing more to be added to that!
He's showing amazingly healthy and beautiful plants growing in no-tills on their 22nd run btw lol


So since I'm not going to start recommending the hillbilly-handful of random soil approach until I have done that myself, I don't see any reason not to use those rock dusts as a sand-silt-clay replacement in the meantime.
I forget which, but the one or other input in that "department" has problems like hi aluminum content and such, at present I tend to counteract such potentially negative effects simply by input diversity, i.e. small amounts of different inputs vs. relying on a single input, and not worry too much about it elsewise.

Hoping that's not totally offtopic to your question!
cheers!

 

[calliandra]

So I've been pensive about my pot sizes, thinking there may be a point where they're too big, and make the autos dawdle (as they are in my closet).
After a lot of conundering and talking to people about it, I am now reaching the conclusion that that'S not the problem - not lastly because MzWoozy in her 15L is taking her time too!
So I've singled out a factor which may actually be causing this: air humidity, which with the tons of foliage in there now invariably has stayed above 50% and can reach the 80's near the soil.

I have a less intrusive possibility than stripping the poor plants of all their leaves though
I had been tunneling the very dry air input the house spews into our flat through the closet, since it was really causing problems in the beginning. But now, I've just pulled that duct down to the floor where it is now bringing fresh air at a constant of 20°C and 20% humidity into the closet environment.
Also, I took a shitload of leaves off the companion bean, which it turns out was getting ready to throw off a few herself, all scrunched up in the corner as they were growing. And took the opportunity to cut back the comfrey, as well as a few branches of the NLH that were starting to crowd MzWoozy.
All of this done in an intoxicating cloud of strawberry smells - all coming from Mz Woozy, Sissi is going rubber today lol

Another thing I'm going to change up is when I water - I've been doing that at lights out, helping high humidity, so I'll try to water them at lights ON instead too.
Looking forward to seeing whether/how that changes things up!

Some pictorial impressions from today, day 57!

Cannabean

Going to have to start harvesting there!
Though I've decided to leave that first pod for seed

Boring canopy pic lol

And some bud closeups:
Queen Sissi's main bud

One of Sissi's secondaries:

Not much difference!

And MzWoozy, now starting to frost her leaf edges more too

Cheers!

 

[Dudeski]

I haven't reached a conclusion on this yet, but I suspect we could get our mineral part of the mix simply by adding a few handfuls of the next best soil we can dig into (as long as it's not anaerobic or heavily fertilized, we don't want to be introducing unwanted elements that could cause havoc in our mix - whereby, with a really good microbial herd, they could handle that too).

Basically I think we're all completely confused by the chemical-think of the past 60 years, and the fear of scarcity it generates in our bones - and I totally count myself in with the crowd on this and keep stumbling over it!
Plus of course there is environmental devastation, which forces us to doubt the integrity of any inputs where man has been actively influencing.
Stories of people telling me how alpine herbs no longer have the healing power of former days - no agriculture up there beyond light sheep or cow grazing, along with some maintenance to preserve the cultivated ecosystem that has arisen over the ages of this mode of alpine land use! Up there, damage is being done by the mere settling of pollution dusts we're blowing into the air...

I opened an Instagram account recently to see how Mountain Organics is faring with his system (the system I'm leaning on to get my soils going), and LO! He's skipping just about all the amendments he used to recommend, depending mainly on his compost to have the right microbial profile, and mulching plant material back to the soil.
My opinion: yes! That's exactly where I want to head myself!
But you can only pull that off with a really good compost, and finding a trustworthy source (or taking the time to learn and make our own, with all the conundrums on inputs coming back boomerang style to haunt us) is the core issue.
But the reason I'm mentioning it: he makes the mineral portion of his mixes with volcanic rock dust along with pumice for aeration

Here's his recipe along with his reasonings:



Nothing more to be added to that!
He's showing amazingly healthy and beautiful plants growing in no-tills on their 22nd run btw lol


So since I'm not going to start recommending the hillbilly-handful of random soil approach until I have done that myself, I don't see any reason not to use those rock dusts as a sand-silt-clay replacement in the meantime.
I forget which, but the one or other input in that "department" has problems like hi aluminum content and such, at present I tend to counteract such potentially negative effects simply by input diversity, i.e. small amounts of different inputs vs. relying on a single input, and not worry too much about it elsewise.

Hoping that's not totally offtopic to your question!
cheers!

That is absolutely perfect! Makes me much less worried and my plunge into learning soil. Have you been cruising our organs section? We have some good ones in there . Hecno is doing exactly what you are talking about, using native soils and stuff from his property.

 

[Dudeski]

Are you using the comfrey for compost?

 

[calliandra]

That is absolutely perfect! Makes me much less worried and my plunge into learning soil. Have you been cruising our organs section? We have some good ones in there . Hecno is doing exactly what you are talking about, using native soils and stuff from his property.

Awesome!
Ohwow, there's an organics section?! lol
Actually, I am only now starting to venture forth outside the Mephisto forum --- I've gotten to the competitions one
TBH I've had my forum time concerning organics, for the moment I've actually been avoiding them until I get my own stuff sufficiently sorted
But I'll surely go peek at what Hecno's doing! Cheers for the heads up!

Are you using the comfrey for compost?

I'm using my comfrey mainly for direct feedings, blending a cut up leaf with water, and for mulching (all my plants get this, not just the cannabis).
Last summer, I did throw a few into my wormbin too, but I'm more for using it directly - it decomposes so fast anyway, plus I only have 3 plants outside, 2 of which I only planted last year
But if I had lots of it, yeah sure, I'd add it to my composts too!

Actually, I'm probably going to phase out the kelp once I can cover my needs with comfrey, as a locally growable equivalent
Cheers!

 

[Dudeski]

I've been listening to the KIS Organics podcasts, they grow it for their garden/farm.

 

[Dudeski]

Here's a link to hecno thread.

https://www.autoflower.org/threads/hecnos-on-going-organics.55277/page-51#post-1694118

 

[Roasty McToasty]

Oh man this is a good thread! Thank you for sharing all this, I have learned a lot. Your plants look awesome too, your soil seems healthy, and only getting better.
I germed 2 CQ for the comp., so I appreciate the preview.

 

[calliandra]

Oh man this is a good thread! Thank you for sharing all this, I have learned a lot. Your plants look awesome too, your soil seems healthy, and only getting better.
I germed 2 CQ for the comp., so I appreciate the preview.

Haha thanks for the like-storm, and glad my ravings have been useful to you too!
Very cool you're growing the CQ for the comp!
I've been getting the impression they can go a few different ways growthwise, so really excited to see which way yours go!
If you like fruity weed, I hope yours turn out to be like MzWoozy, that lil girl is so amazing in terms of aromas - yesterday evening the whole flat was smelling of peaches after I opened the closet for a while for the pretty view
This morning, they're both spreading a fruit loops aroma, Queen Sissi of course having to add an old sock or two into the mix lmao
Cheers!

 

[calliandra]

Closet update!
The changes to the air intake have lowered the humidity a bit, maximums are in the 60s now and all the way down to 45%
But the NLH was crowding the closet so badly
(canopy view)


I went and chopped her down to make space for the CQs

Just kidding haha
I was just messing around and wanted to see what the situation would be like if I only had 2 "normal" plants in there
I didn't spread out their branches any, knowing they'd have to be squished in again, but I think it's quite clear now (as if it wasn't before) that my grow space is totally overcrowded, and the girls would have benefited greatly had they been able to grow out like that.
Especially since MzWoozy decided to grow into a full plant anyway - which I can only attribute to the Mephisto vigour she has built into her!!!

rare full-plant view of Queen Sissi (I can't take her out anymore, the bean's bound to the wall ), day 59 today

She is quite the bush, and her undergrowth consists mainly of budsybuds

Whilst playing around, I also saw there has been some furtive thripsy-looking nibbing at her bottommost leaves where she's all scrunched up against the wall

I didn't see any actual thrips, but treated them with a rapeseed oil foliar anyway as it can't hurt, and also removed some of them, since they have neither light nor space down there anyways.
Nothing tragic, but nice to catch in time.

So still same general situation

The curse of being able to check on my soil is that I know that unfortunately, the biology in the NLH pot is collapsing, and also that my freshly harvested VC has root-feeding nematodes in it
I shouldn't have tried to inoculate my wormbin with that compost of a friend of mine, I'm pretty sure that's where I got them from.

I wouldn't even mind that, if I knew the rest of the microherd is abundant and resilient enough to prevent damage.
By mere displacement, covering the whole plant in good microbial protection to crowd out the bad guys, gobbling up all the foods, maintaining the environment nice and aerobic, and maybe even actively hunting them down.
But it's not, so I don't have a microbial inoculant to do anything about the NLH's weak microherd until I figure out how to handle this situation.

So now I'm hesitating to check on Sissi's soil too, which I did plan to - but since I can't really do anything about it, I don't really want to know? Sweet oblivion! LOL

Plants really are amazing creatures!
They try to grow way before conditions have reached a comfortable level for them.
Looking at the NLH, one wouldn't think her soil situation is as dire as it then turns out to be under the microscope!

But enough of these soil conunderigs, here's a secondary bud of Sissi's

oops looks like I lost a hair over all that haha

Cheers!