Iwltfum's Recirculating Coco GH Journal - Harlequin - Blackwater OG - China Jack

[iwltfum]

Looking good iwltfum! I didn't even realize you had a journal until I stumbled across it. Maybe update your sig?

Anyway, I'm along for the ride!

I've also mentioned this. This is a talented guy that would have a cult behind him if he started a signature. Haha maybe that's enough reason not too.

All the best, friends!

You guys are swell. I do have my reasons for not putting my current journal in my signature. I appreciate the lookin' out though!
I'm glad you guys have found your way to my grow journal despite the fact that I haven't posted it.


I'm always one of the people at the party that smells out the weed in the backroom and ends up hanging out in someones bedroom smoking a bong for the duration of the party and then I get bitched at by my girlfriend because "she was looking for me for HALF AN HOUR". lol

 

[Weaselcracker]

He he. It was pretty quiet around here for a while,nice to see a little second housewarming.

 

[iwltfum]

Nothing too new to report on the current planTs. Current plaNs though are to grow and bloom these seedlings in organic soil. I have been researching and experimenting with coming up with some soil recipes that will use many of the amendments that I already have laying around and require me to purchase the least amount of ingredients. I mixed some soil to get it started today using this recipe:

castings 2gallons
fish meal 0.75cups
rock phos 1cup
kelp 0.5cup
N guano 0.25cup
bone meal 0.25cup
P guano 0.65cup
K sulfate 10.5Tbls
lime 0.5cup
oyster shells 2cups
mycorrhizae 25cc
trichoderma 10cc
perlite 3gallons
recycled soil 19gallons

Ingredients laid out

I tried to get as much of the old root material as I could for the sake of experimentation

Here are the soil, perlite, hydroton, and castings (I wanted to take pictures after I put the amendments on the pile but the wind was kicking today so I had to bury each ingredient as I added them)

Final mix, spread out to look for clumps and foreign objects

Ready to start cooking!

 

[Pigeons420]

Great work with that soil man!

I wish I was ready to change up all my stuff and go organic. I feel like I've learned so much and I'm not at the point where I am ready to make that change.

Good on ya

 

[iwltfum]

Great work with that soil man!

I wish I was ready to change up all my stuff and go organic. I feel like I've learned so much and I'm not at the point where I am ready to make that change.

Good on ya

I don't know if I'll be making a FULL switch. I'm just going to try these seedlings out with the amended soil. I was actually taught how to grow cannabis using sub cools super soil and GeneralOrganic nutrients. I think I might use some top dressings (bone meal and guano) in flower, but I'm hoping to not need any nutrient supplementation at all barring a few compost teas.

 

[jojo677]

Interesting mix. I'm excited to see how it works out for you! Did you just moisten and cover the soil to let it cook for a few weeks?

 

[iwltfum]

Interesting mix. I'm excited to see how it works out for you! Did you just moisten and cover the soil to let it cook for a few weeks?

The recycled soil was pretty moist and the castings helped a little too so I didn't add any moisture, but I keep on thinking I should have. The top of the soil in the bins has dried out, but just under the top layer is pretty dark so I don't know. I may add moisture when I dump it back on the tarp next week to turn it and add some minerals

EDIT: Yes, the bins are covered

 

[iwltfum]

I hate to sound like I'm plugging a company, but kelp4less is just awesome. I looked for alot of ingredients for my soil that I couldn't find anywhere. I even went into the big and noisy and smelly city of denver to try and find some of these things. No luck. Of course, I check kelp4less and they have everything I need for much less than I was expecting to pay for it. I just ordered:
5lbs kelp meal
7lbs of azomite
4lbs crab meal
5lbs glacial rock dust
5lbs alfalfa meal
1lb powdered cal+mag
4oz of mycs and inoculants

Here is the break down on their inoculants:
Beneficial Endo Mycorrhizal fungi species:
Glomus intraradices,
G. aggregatum,
G. mosseae,
G. etunicatum,
(100,000 propagules/lb)

Beneficial Ecto Mycorrhizal fungi species:
Rhizopogon villosullus, R. luteolus, R. amylopogon, R. fulvigleba (95 million prop./lb each),
Pisolithus tinctorius (568 million prop./lb),
Laccaria bicolor and L. laccata (38 million prop./lb each),
Scleroderma Cepa, S. citrinum (189 million prop./lb each),
Suillus granulatas and S. punctatapies (118 million prop./lb each).

Beneficial Bacteria:
Bacillus subtillus,
Bacillus licheniformis,
Bacillus azotoformans,
Bacillus megaterium,
Bacillus coagulans,
Bacillus pumlis,
Bacillus thuringiensis,
Bacillus stearothermiphilis,
Paenibacillus polymyxa,
Paenibacillus durum,
Paenibacillus florescence,

Paenibacillus gordonae,
Azotobacter polymyxa,
Azotobacter chroococcum,
Sacchromyces cervisiae,
Streptomyces griseues,
Streptomyces lydicus,
Pseudomonas aureofaceans,
Deinococcus erythromyxa A. chroococcum,
Sacchromyces cervisiae,
Pseudomonas aureofaceans,
(372 million cfu/lb each.)

 

[OldMedUser]

High iwitfum

Just read thru your journal and you sure got a lot of irons in the fire

I'm more of a dump nutes and walk away kind of grower but love seeing some nice organic plants too.

I'll have to hang out and see how it grows.

L8r

 

[iwltfum]

High iwitfum

Just read thru your journal and you sure got a lot of irons in the fire

I'm more of a dump nutes and walk away kind of grower but love seeing some nice organic plants too.

I'll have to hang out and see how it grows.

L8r

Hey oldmed. Thanks for stopping by! At work, I take care of thousands of plants on a daily basis so what I have going right now is small time in my eyes. Over the past couple of years, I've gone from knowing nothing about hydroponic growing to being incredibly bored with it. Not to mention being tired of constantly combating pests and diseases, which hydro seems to bring along with it everywhere. I've been talking alot with "the organic mechanic" over at kelp4less (they are all experienced farmers out of Idaho Falls, ID) and he has convinced me that the semi-salty soil is the way to go. So, since I'm currently trying to get away from the "salt life", I will probably just go with amended soil for now. If the bud formation is small, I might add some mono-potassium phosphate, but that is the only salty nutrient that I might use on the first round. Then, if that goes as planned, I will try the amended soil, with kelp4less "salty soil" nutrients.

 

[OldMedUser]

You got more practice than me then. I have little interest in growing anything but pot and have killed every houseplant I've ever had. lol

I fail to see how hydro brings more pests and diseases tho. I've had totally the opposite experience. Every time I've had bugs in the last 15 years there's been soil involved. Fungus gnats and mites in bags of "sterile" soil have caused total death to my room once and hassles getting rid of them other times. Nice, near sterile, hydro grows just work great for me with a minimum of fuss and bother.

I don't grow that much as I don't need that much and have most of my experimentation behind me. I found what works easy for me and keeps me stocked up with meds but really like watching other folks do their thing and helping out where I can.

L8r

 

[iwltfum]

You got more practice than me then. I have little interest in growing anything but pot and have killed every houseplant I've ever had. lol

Interesting. It seems to be that way with alot of folks. I enjoy growing all kinds of plants. I have a cactus garden and a vegetable garden and some flowers inside and out (gotta keep the pollinators around). I used to work for a greenhouse that supplied a number of farm to table restaurants in the Boston area. I love plants.

I fail to see how hydro brings more pests and diseases tho. I've had totally the opposite experience. Every time I've had bugs in the last 15 years there's been soil involved. Fungus gnats and mites in bags of "sterile" soil have caused total death to my room once and hassles getting rid of them other times. Nice, near sterile, hydro grows just work great for me with a minimum of fuss and bother.

I seem to have had more problems with mites and fungus gnats in hydro than I have had in soil. That's interesting. I wonder what made our results so different? I had never even seen a fungus gnat in person until I switched my cannabis over to hydro.

I don't grow that much as I don't need that much and have most of my experimentation behind me. I found what works easy for me and keeps me stocked up with meds but really like watching other folks do their thing and helping out where I can.

Sweet! I'm glad to have you looking in then Oldmed! :

 

[iwltfum]

Going to have to take some pictures tomorrow, but the SnowWreck has completely over taken both the green crack and the blackwater. The green crack is now pretty much living in the shade of the SnowWreck. I should have thought about that before I planted them in the ground, but what's done is done. We'll see how she turns out. So far it looks like, the SnowWreck will make up for what the green crack might be lacking.

 

[Pigeons420]

Forgive my ignorance my man, I didn't know you had a Green Crack on the go!

Just harvested mine a couple weeks ago and have had a test and man am I a happy camper. Crazy good shit man!

 

[iwltfum]

Three days later and I have some heavy boxes on the porch! Time for some dirt turning!

Forgive my ignorance my man, I didn't know you had a Green Crack on the go!

Just harvested mine a couple weeks ago and have had a test and man am I a happy camper. Crazy good shit man!

Sure do! It's been in the corner of the mom room for a long time and I was never able to get it back to full vigor (without transplanting it, and I don't like big pots in the mom room). So I threw it outside and it's looking great. It was actually the first out of the three to start flowering. Which means it actually has a chance of finishing before the first freeze!

 

[iwltfum]

Long story short, I added twice as much alfalfa meal and kelp meal as I needed to. As evidenced by the soil smelling like the ocean after I mixed all that in. So I diluted it with more recycled coco and put more of everything else in.

The current mix:

40gal recycled soil
5gal perlite/hydroton 3:1
47cups Castings (2.9gal)
1.5cups Fish meal
1cup rock phos
0.5cups kelp
0.5cups N guano
0.5cups bone meal
1.4cups P guano
0.3cups K sulfate
0.5cups humic acid (insoluble)
1cup Diatomaceous earth
4cups oyster shells
4cups crab meal
4cups glacial rock dust
0.75cups Azomite (granular)
2lbs Alfalfa meal
1lb Kelp meal
TOTAL: 49.2 gallons

So I thought to myself - There's no use in changing up these soil mixes if I'm not testing each of them. So, despite the fact that this soil has only cooked for a week, I figured I could get a good idea of the strength of it - just feeding a plant water that is growing in the soil. So I transplanted an extra BWOG clone into some of the new mix as a test run. It drained beautifully! and the pH of the run off was about 6.7 - just hours into the experiment, but so far, so good Here's a picture:

A little late on the snowwreck picture, but here she is (Those plants were all at the same height when I planted them there):

 

[iwltfum]

ARG. I think I have russet mites. I had them a few years ago and it was the same progression - at first, it seems like the lights are too close to the plants and maybe a little nute burn so I take it one by one. I dealt with the heat issue first, a bit of an improvement, but not enough to call it that. I dealt with the burn issue second. A better improvement, but now I can see what's really going on. That leathery leaf texture. Slightly deformed new growth. Exaggerated clawing and curling. Don't I know that from somewhere...? They must have come in with my most recent bag of coco since the ones that are worst off are the ones that I planted using that bag and it's on multiple strains. I can't believe my luck this summer. Personally, I think I'm being sabotaged , but hey, gotta deal with it either way. I sprayed a dilute mixture of spinosad and dr bronners. Just realized that I should have added iso too, but I will tomorrow. I'm about to go take some pictures of the damaged plants.

 

[iwltfum]

 

[jojo677]

Sorry to hear about the mites! At least you (most likely) know what they are and how to treat them!

 

[Weaselcracker]

Bummer. I never heard of russet mites before recently. I'm off to google them and see what the buggers look like. Best of luck with them

Edit. That was scary reading. A bit of a doomsday scenario actually, from a couple sites anyway.
From the sounds of it though you already know how best to do with them. From what I read I sounded like heat was the best way to eradicate them (?) depending on the logistics of that?

"Russet, Cyclamen or Broad mites are very sensitive to heat. They are more difficult to control in winter than in summer due to lower greenhouse temperatures.

Hot Water Treatment: Soaking infested plants in water held at 111 - 115 degrees F for 15 minutes will destroy these mites without damage to most plants. (Not recommended for Medical or Hemp growers: use Hot Air Treatment)
Hot Air Treatment: This method can only be used in contained areas (areas or rooms that can be sealed) by raising the air temperature to 115 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes. Best results were reported using (at least) two circulation fans to create some vortex. As all eggs may not be terminated using this method, weekly repeat applications may be necessary to achieve desired results."