Hey Sensi,
How ya doing .... Plants look marvelous as usual .... One reminds me of an orphan Xmas tree ....
Second go in no till better than first?
Good Work Bro, You’re a Machine!
The 'Sour Stomper' has that one section that looks pretty bare. It reminds me of 'Charlie Brown's Xmas Branch'.
Second run was pretty smooth, didn't seem to run low on anything.
All the plants I'm running now are all on their 3rd round. This should be the best, but we will see.
Here are some morning coffee thoughts I would share about nutrient cycling and what I do.
The trick with no till is nutrient cycling. Just because you are running low on something toward the end of a cycle, doesn't mean that you need to add more in the interim, because hopefully time and the life in your pot will have made more available by the time you need it again.
The way I think about goes kind of like this. I don't really think in NPK terms, but this is a concept that has to be understood that way. For example with regards to N. In the beginning of the first cycle after around the 3rd week, the plant takes a lot of N from the soil and continues to take a lot till just after the middle of the cycle, at which point it takes less and less. As the plant is taking less, it allows the N concentration to build again as materials break down and more N becomes available. This is why its important to have very slow release items in your mix. This is the job that is served by bark in the mix and top dress, as well as the mulch, and any rootballs that are breaking down in the soil. So the moral of the story is even if you are sure you were running low on N during the previous round, you may be just fine on N the next. When it comes to the 3rd round, you have lots of roots breaking down from several cycles, as well as bark and mulch. I also have the first 2 or 3 weeks of plant life each cycle, when the plant isn't really taking anything from the soil, which also gives the soil time to build up its stores.
This whole ebb and flow of nutrients is partially why I am hesitant to defoliate during a grow. If there is a time that a mobile nutrient is running low in the soil, the plant can take from its stores or sinks in the leaves, and just clip right along hoping that the soil will catch up. When the plant starts translocating nutrients is when I believe that the plant will send signals thru the rhizosphere to mycorrhizae and other soil life, to search out and find what it needs and set up a network. There is of course a lag time, and that is where the leaf stores come in.
There is a whole phenomenon that happens with P and mychorizzae. It works like this. If there is plenty of P readily available to a plant in the beginning of its life, it will make no effort to set up a P gathering network, cause its not needed. Then when all the easy P is gone, it begins to set up a network to find and utilize P. There is a lag time. This is the whole reason, why seed starter with almost nil for nutrients works better than a nutrient rich seed starter. Low nutrient soil causes the plant to set up networks early.
With no till, these networks or pathways are left intact, and the new host plant is often able to take advantage of these networks, and have little to no lag time.
cheers
os
