Mephisto Genetics Cosmic Queens in not quite living soil

[Farmer Dee]

Nice grow, good luck! I gave up on no-till. It’s hands off, and no fun for a tinkerer like me but makes some really great Medicine. You clearly have patience and a caring hand. I applaud all who can stand watching clovers, sprouts and such grow in tandem with their plants and not be OC about it. You’re doing it right and I hope you get the end results you’re seeking!

 

[calliandra]

Nice grow, good luck! I gave up on no-till. It’s hands off, and no fun for a tinkerer like me but makes some really great Medicine. You clearly have patience and a caring hand. I applaud all who can stand watching clovers, sprouts and such grow in tandem with their plants and not be OC about it. You’re doing it right and I hope you get the end results you’re seeking!

Cheers for the kind words!

 

[calliandra]

day 30

I was just reviewing the Cosmic Queen's strain description and realized today is already pretty much half-time!
Standing at 38cm, and starting to shift her focus to flowering now

Top budsite, clearly changing gears

And the plant tip from the side

The very light leaf tips are starting to green up, I do get the feeling that overamending hiccup may have taken some wind out of her sails.
Looking forward to where she takes it from here!
Cheers!

 

[Site]

how have you found the living soill? I decided to mix up a batch last week and its just 'cooking' as people keep calling it and im looking forward to getting it going for a few grows...i might have to send a few questions over in regards to amending the soil after each grow!

 

[calliandra]

how have you found the living soill? I decided to mix up a batch last week and its just 'cooking' as people keep calling it and im looking forward to getting it going for a few grows...i might have to send a few questions over in regards to amending the soil after each grow!

Hiya Site, living soil is absolutely what I want to have my plants in, the veggies and fruit and herbs too .. and trees, and lawns, and savannahs, the whole wide world!!
That said, the soil the CQ is growing in is still developing. With the fresh start of this recycled soil set to go no-till, I've begun following an approach that continually amends the soil over the first few runs, gradually conditioning the soil so to speak. So I'm a beginner with this myself haha
Since there are so many ways to skin this cat, I'd stick to people that have been using the same recipe as you for a while - they will know how to go about amending your particular mix too
Cheers!

 

[Rogue Chief]

how have you found the living soill? I decided to mix up a batch last week and its just 'cooking' as people keep calling it and im looking forward to getting it going for a few grows...i might have to send a few questions over in regards to amending the soil after each grow!

I find that having worms in your soil with a nice mulch layer that continues to break down with time will bring the most life to your soil. Add in a weekly or biweekly kelp/neem tea and or powdered malted barley top dress and things will get going in a hurry. I would grow no other way than organic living soil and I'm excited to see that I am not alone.

 

[Site]

Hiya Site, living soil is absolutely what I want to have my plants in, the veggies and fruit and herbs too .. and trees, and lawns, and savannahs, the whole wide world!!
That said, the soil the CQ is growing in is still developing. With the fresh start of this recycled soil set to go no-till, I've begun following an approach that continually amends the soil over the first few runs, gradually conditioning the soil so to speak. So I'm a beginner with this myself haha
Since there are so many ways to skin this cat, I'd stick to people that have been using the same recipe as you for a while - they will know how to go about amending your particular mix too
Cheers!

Im unsure if the member has actually amended it let alone used the soil yet! I was looking at subcools recipe but it was harder to find the ingredients here in the UK so when searching for a UK recipe it actually pointed me towards a thread on here so ive taken his recipe and ordered the ingredients to make it up...the recipe is ax follows but im gonna do as follows...

50ltrs Allmix
20ltrs Coco Coir
10ltrs Perlite
4lbs/2kg Worm Castings
4lbs/2kg Leaf Mold
10oz/300g Bone Meal 3.5-17-0
5oz/150g Bat Guano 1-10-1
5oz/150g Hoof and Horn 13-0-0
10oz/300g Seaweed Meal
1/2 or 1 cup Volcanic Rock Dust
1 tablespoon Mycorrhizae
1/2 cup Egg shells
1.5 tbs Epsom Salts
2 cups Gypsum
2 cups Oyster shell
1 tablespoon Humic Acid
75 ml Silica

Gonna let it sit for around 6 weeks now until my run of autos is done then use it for my next batch of plants! Did you make your own soil up just wondering how it compares to your recipe Gonna be following your grow closely to see where i can try and improve mine on as im gonna be spending the next month reading journals and seeing how other people have improved their soil and kept it going!

I find that having worms in your soil with a nice mulch layer that continues to break down with time will bring the most life to your soil. Add in a weekly or biweekly kelp/neem tea and or powdered malted barley top dress and things will get going in a hurry. I would grow no other way than organic living soil and I'm excited to see that I am not alone.

got a wormery on order at the moment...me and my new housemate fish and eat a lot of veg/fruit in the household...so having a wormery is gonna be perfect for my soil but also for free worms for fishing! i will keep the kelp/neem tea or malted barley top dress in mind though as it would have been nice to get the soil going properly for a while! I do agree though i think the living soil is a great idea and principle really...i mean its how it should be grown by introducing natural minerals and 'ingredients' as i would put it and allowing nature to run its course!

 

[calliandra]

Im unsure if the member has actually amended it let alone used the soil yet! I was looking at subcools recipe but it was harder to find the ingredients here in the UK so when searching for a UK recipe it actually pointed me towards a thread on here so ive taken his recipe and ordered the ingredients to make it up...the recipe is ax follows but im gonna do as follows...

50ltrs Allmix
20ltrs Coco Coir
10ltrs Perlite
4lbs/2kg Worm Castings
4lbs/2kg Leaf Mold
10oz/300g Bone Meal 3.5-17-0
5oz/150g Bat Guano 1-10-1
5oz/150g Hoof and Horn 13-0-0
10oz/300g Seaweed Meal
1/2 or 1 cup Volcanic Rock Dust
1 tablespoon Mycorrhizae
1/2 cup Egg shells
1.5 tbs Epsom Salts
2 cups Gypsum
2 cups Oyster shell
1 tablespoon Humic Acid
75 ml Silica

Gonna let it sit for around 6 weeks now until my run of autos is done then use it for my next batch of plants! Did you make your own soil up just wondering how it compares to your recipe Gonna be following your grow closely to see where i can try and improve mine on as im gonna be spending the next month reading journals and seeing how other people have improved their soil and kept it going!



got a wormery on order at the moment...me and my new housemate fish and eat a lot of veg/fruit in the household...so having a wormery is gonna be perfect for my soil but also for free worms for fishing! i will keep the kelp/neem tea or malted barley top dress in mind though as it would have been nice to get the soil going properly for a while! I do agree though i think the living soil is a great idea and principle really...i mean its how it should be grown by introducing natural minerals and 'ingredients' as i would put it and allowing nature to run its course!

LOL so when I started this thread I swore to myself I was going to shut up about my soil conundrums and just show the plant so much for that haha
it's the same as going on a trip to get away from one's problems, they invariably come along anyway haha

Ah yes, subcool! In fact, I am using a bit of a different one from you.
But firstly, CONGRATS on setting up a wormery, best thing ever! --- and on sourcing all that stuff, quite an amazing feat!
I'm in central Europe, so sourcing is even more of a problem. So I've simplified inputs and gone for the mountainOrganics no-till mix, whereby I was amending / recycling an older soil that had been fallow for a year.
The main difference between our mixes is that I don't have those animal meals in there (so your mix is hotter), nor so many different "mineral" meals .
Also, I have this thing with my aeration, I like to diversify there.

Here's what I did:
My point of departure was besaid no-till gone fallow.
This no-till soil was made from recycled soils (store bought, partially peat based) from my very first grows, with added lava rock (whose chunkiness makes it prone to sinking to pot bottom) and compost. In its last (third) run, a 4cm quartz sand layer I had topdressed to stop fungus gnats also added some sand into the mix.
Aggregation had collapsed, leaving the structure fine and silty, and there was practically no fibrous material.

So to amend and reactivate!

40L of old soil were amended with:

• 8L aerating/draining material (+ long-term food sources)
  • 4L biochar, soaked in 1:8 diluted urine
  • 2L buckwheat hulls & pistacchio shells
  • 2L perlite
• 4L coco coir
• 4L vermicompost
• amendments 1.5 cups each
  • ground raw eggshells
  • diatomaceous earth
  • kelp meal
  • neem meal
  • malted barley powder
• 1 cup oat bran (fungal food)

Mixed up really well, with an end moisture at somewhere around 40% (per squeeze test).
Worms from both soil and VC hung on through all the mixing.

I couldn't resist and watered in some green smoothie made from tomato plant shoots, also adding them as mulch layer starters.

Hay got added on top of that, and a compost thermometer stuck in so I could see whether/how much it would heat up (=microbial life coming back into action)

Temps got to a bit over 30°C for a few days. When it cooled back down and stuff started sprouting after about 10 days, the Cosmic Queen got planted.
And here we are, one month later!

 

[calliandra]

Ooops got carried away there
Regarding your mix!

50ltrs Allmix
20ltrs Coco Coir
10ltrs Perlite
4lbs/2kg Worm Castings
4lbs/2kg Leaf Mold
10oz/300g Bone Meal 3.5-17-0
5oz/150g Bat Guano 1-10-1
5oz/150g Hoof and Horn 13-0-0
10oz/300g Seaweed Meal
1/2 or 1 cup Volcanic Rock Dust
1 tablespoon Mycorrhizae
1/2 cup Egg shells
1.5 tbs Epsom Salts
2 cups Gypsum
2 cups Oyster shell
1 tablespoon Humic Acid
75 ml Silica

Gonna let it sit for around 6 weeks now until my run of autos is done then use it for my next batch of plants! Did you make your own soil up just wondering how it compares to your recipe Gonna be following your grow closely to see where i can try and improve mine on as im gonna be spending the next month reading journals and seeing how other people have improved their soil and kept it going!

I wouldn't add the mycorrhizae to the soil mix, it's a waste of an otherwise excellent input.
Add mycorrhizae to the planting/seeding hole, powder the roots when transplanting.
You need those spores to be as close as possible to the roots.
Once the spores of mycorrhizal fungi germinate, they have a limited time to dock onto a host root, else they'll just die.
Whereby that is rare anyway, since usually it is enzymes coming from the plant roots that wake the spores up in the first place!

And here's where phosphorus comes into play. Mycorrhizal fungi are excellent P-miners, and a plant will be most interested in forming mycorrhizal associations if P is sparse. So if we load up our mixes with P, there will be no incentive for the plant to initiate any such associations, won't be putting out the germination enzymes, and those spores willjust sit there doing nothing.
The next question then is, how much P is too much?! or for that matter, how little P is too little?!

And that I cannot answer.
Yet? Maybe!
My mix doesn't have high P input, I've added the mycos to the seeding hole, and will continue to do so in future runs.
Then I'll see, whether I run into problems or not!

So you see, my mix being so light in comparison to yours, it will probably need a different maintenance regime too. Something you do to consolidate and maintain your mix with great success may have catastrophic effects on mine and vice versa
Cheers!

 

[calliandra]

day 32
After having shown her to you last time right after lights out, when she mostly lets it all hang, I took her out of the closet today just before lights out.
Standing 42cm tall

Branching
Those two branches pretty much up with the main tip are from the 2nd node, with the branch from the 1st (the monoleaf) and the third are visible up front in the leaf mass, quite a bit shorter than those other two.

She did get defoliated a bit, as I got the feeling she's trying to grow away from herself, or at least all that tangled mass. I mainly removed leaves that were getting squished, pressed down against the soil, and 4 of the fan leaves growing out the mid section of the main stem.

Still enough foliage left, I'd say The wingspan of the bush is at around 75cm (=the depth of the closet).

The plant matter from the defoliation got chopped (my blender just died) and stirred into water, and watered back to the plant.


Oh and this is something that can be done no matter the soil recipe!
Because it's a solution of aaall the nutrients a healthy cannabis plant needs to grow healthily, in perfect amounts. No danger of any unbalanced feeding there!
Cheers!