New Grower Perpetual Auto Grow By The Trifid..

[Noods]

Trifid, as you know, Walt Disney won't be coming back to life because his head has been frozen, resulting in the destruction of 99% of said head. So if I destroyed the cells of my Kelp Powder by freezing them, would the powder become water soluble?

ps: I like your posts. They lend much understanding to the processes going on in my little cab and in my plants.

 

[flwr]

Hey, hey what have I missed. Those plants look awesome!

 

[Trifid]

Haha.. I swear i see him at the press conference of the G20 the other week but i think perhaps it was David Cameron?? Anyway they look a like Although freezing his head is likely to lead to another huge investment on the behalf of global banking corporations and a further ecomnomical cloapse in the eurozone putting disney paris at the center of yet another great controversy. Only this time it wont involve children or Tom Cruise..

Extraction by freeze thaw methodology is a rather crude way of extracting the active ingredients but yes it will work. Using freeze-thaw to release the active ingredients from the cell membranes of the cyano-bacteria will give you an aqueous supernate fluid abundant in soluble minerals and plant growth hormones. If allowed to settle or if placed under centrifuge the supernate will partition into fractions or 'layers' according to the specific density of the contents. Cheap or 'commerciallized' kelp extracts undergo alkaloid assisted extraction processes that similarly reduces the microbial levels in the supernate fluid. Good home-brew or lab grade extracts are derived from cold fermentation process (without any chemical assistance) that maintains high levels of auxins, hormones, PGRs and microbial colonies..

 

[Nelson]

You answered it. I always like to know why.

I use ground oyster shells. Got a bit of calcium but mostly up here in Canada we get a lot of slugs and they hate the ground oyster shells. I think it hurts there soft bellies. They also reflect light back upwars on the lower branches. I use it indoors when I grow in pots and always outdoors. The marigolds that I always plant around the plants look great growing in the white shells. I plant the marigolds for insect control. I am going to plant marigolds inside this year for bug protection as well. I will try and find some seeds. I bet that is going to be a drag. I guess I will just have to order some from a catalogue.

No worries that's a good question since i gave no plausible explanation.. I added wood chippings as a surface layer to provide a barrier between the mulch layer and the lower part of the canopy. Since i've encouraged the proliferation of soil fungus and bacteria didn't want them to invade or contaminate the bud sites. Rather i swapped them for quartz chippings which do a much better job of dispersing the fluid during feeding Apparently wood chipping can encourage termites as righty pointed out by Noods earlier in the thread. Hope this clears things up.

 

[Noods]

Thanks Trifid!

 

[Trifid]

There are of course a couple quite major negatives to using the dessicated extracts; supernates derived from cyano-bacteria or 'algae' are missing alginic acid salts and Mannitol. These valuable cheating agents are reduced to their conjugate base elements during processing and extraction. This is why i'd insist on using powdered kelp in your mixes, something i deliberately excluded from my mix so that i could assess the growth promoting effects (by foliar) of yeast/marine algae extracts in auto varieties without interference from the growing media.

 

[Noods]

Oops. I should have mentioned that I was think specifically of "Kelp Foliars". The plants love that, but when I use the powder, there is so much residue on the leaves when it dries. I wanted to find a way around that residue.

 

[Trifid]

Yes good question.. This applies to foliar extracts too (above). Regardless to whether you choose to produce the supernate by cold-fermentation or freeze-thaw your resulting fluid will contain deposits that can clog the leaf stomata. To over come this allow the product to settle and separate the fractions by siphoning. I use a transparent beer casket with a tap to separate the fractions and this makes the process much easier.

The high density sediment will occupy the bottom of the container, this fraction is practically void of active ingredients (<1%) and useless. rather than trying to separate out a particular layer, just subtract the heaviest since these particles are likely carrier minerals and deposits or un-fermented meal that can be processed (fermented) agin to obtain more of the crude extract.

 

[Noods]

You're awesome.
What I did was put 1/2 tsp kelp powder into about 30 ml of dist water. I mixed this up in a small plastic bowl and got the mix as consistent as possible, transferred the mix to a small zip-lock bag and placed it in the freezer. This is just a base, or "concentrate", that I'll then add to 500 ml dist water after it's frozen and thawed twice. That 500 ml mixture will then be allowed to settle. After it settles I'll separate the sediment, which will then be mixed with the top layer of soil (waste not, want not). The fluid will be a clean Kelp Foliar. Right?

 

[Trifid]

Right.. Your method is fine. Use distilled water throughout.. When your fractions appear take a photo will you? How are your Afghan coming along? When's your next update? I shall be coming along for the ride your last grow was killer.. Found some raw alginic acid online for pennies i'm going to order it.