Amy Gardner’s High Brix Dreams

[Amy Gardner]

I've seen this mentioned from time to time in threads and I keep forgetting to bring something up. People forget that RH is directly related to temperature. It's the percent of the capacity of the air. Air holds more water vapor at higher temps. So as soon as the temp drops, RH rises. The number that is RH is tied to temperature.

The spike in RH might simply be a sharp drop in temp as the lights cool off. The atmosphere remains the same - the temp just dropped - so the RH "rose" ... ?

Hmm, it is however, also true that when the temp drops, dew is more likely to form, and that's the issue, so ... it's still an issue. But maybe the solution is different?

Makes total sense.

leaving the extraction fan on after lights out has helped with this. Nothing over 56% overnight since I started doing that. It will be drawing air from the room, which is in the 21-23degres range at that time. Plus, I’ve set the aircon for 21-22drgrees overnight so it being a bit warmer is making a difference too, and that follows from what you say.... That wasn’t very clear, sorry! I’m a bit tired - not even going to try to rephrase it ... I get what you’re getting at, absolutely- hopefully you get my convoluted response

 

[InTheShed]

Yes you can.

I would see it as something you could dedicate 2-3plants per grow to maybe, so still do your usual style with others. Foood for thought anyway. It’s really super low maintenance and I worked out it was cheaper over time than all the other options I was considering and that includes shippIng... I wasn’t considering synthetic nutes tho so that wasn’t in the calculation.

And you can cook half a batch ata time. That’s what I did. I have a half batch cooked which will do 2-3 plants depending on pot size. (2x10gal or 3x7gal). Then that soil can get amended and rerun 2 more times after that. The initial kit includes all thats needed to do a second run, and there’s an additional 3rd run ammendment that not much cost. But with the basic kit, there is enough to do 6 7gal plants twice. So that’s 12 seed to harvest cycles with the basic kit - with perhaps only the need to buy additional transplant drench. And then there’s little cost to amend for an additional 3rd run (and some folks do 4 even). So then you add in the castings and the promox HP of course, but I’d still reckon that over time it might works out cheaper. Just an outlay all at once to get started.

The other brix misfits will hopefully correct any of that if it’s wrong, please

The hardest thing is the initial soil mix, and that’s a one off.

Enough zealotry! I was inspired to finally mention it to hou

I did just buy a big bag of Pro Mix HP that I've used all of 5 cups from, so I've got enough for a half batch mix. And if I don't need nutes for it there's a savings there as well. I'll have to go check out pricing from Doc's website as well as for the castings (I'm pretty sure my worm bin was a failure...my fault completely).

Thanks again for looking out for me .

 

[Amy Gardner]

@InTheShed well we have castings of our own here but they’re pretty much for the veggies, and any non kit plants I might grow. For the kit mix, I bought some commercially. There’s no way our worm cafe would produce enough castings for a kit mix (there’s only 2 of us, and we fast a lot!) - the castings are 1/3 of the mix. They’re also the only source of physical weight. The peat moss and perlite (the promixHP) is completely light. I can’t tell you enough how light it is!... but I guess, you use the HP, maybe your pots are already light...

I'd love to have your temps and humidity, I've been struggling with high RH lately and the dreaded bud rot is hitting hard. I really need to improve my ventillation and air flow. All a learning process.

Honestly, it’s winter here right now. In summer... different story. If it was that stage of summer for me I’d be battling the same. Except I get to grow outside, where I can’t do anything about 80-90% humidity so I just have to relax about it and chop off the budrot (and freeze it for future topical oil - ask InTheShed)

top of the morning ms.Amy I trust you had a fab weekend.... It's a new week lots of excited happenings just don't know what they are yet....

And to you Smeegs! Sorry to be late to that, it’s a good evening now...

Sounds like a swingin’ week already.

just having my nightcap... care to partake...?

 

[Pyr0]

Honestly, it’s winter here right now. In summer... different story. If it was that stage of summer for me I’d be battling the same. Except I get to grow outside, where I can’t do anything about 80-90% humidity so I just have to relax about it and chop off the budrot (and freeze it for future topical oil - ask InTheShed)

I keep forgetting we are at opposite sides of the planet, my late summer your late winter

Thanks for passing on InThe Shed's tip on freezing the bud rot bits for topicals, I didn't know that and I've thrown out a fair bit in the past few grows.
One thing I have been playing around with is Horsetail. I found some growing nearby and I made a fermented tea with it and I'm using it as a foilar spray against bud rot, and it really helps a lot, I even tried just dipping an infected bud in the concentrated tea and let it dry over night and a lot of it had gone away, it certainly seems to prevent further spreading.
I'll be freezing any more in future.

Cheers

 

[MagicJim]

Holy moly Amy! That plant is what every plant should look like at 14 days. Not that many do. Mine never .

Beautiful pics. Looks like you and the camera are speaking the same language.

Totally agree. This one looks to be a sweetie. I do suggest topping and tipping some of the branches. I let mine grow tree style and she grew out above the lamp. I treated her poorly but she passed all tests and made it to harvest.

 

[Mr. Magoo]

You peeps using docs kit....which promix do y’all recommend?

 

[Graytail]

ProMix HP is the one that the Kit was formulated for.

You can get by with BX if you add a little more perlite. And I've used some of the retail garden mixes with success - gotta read the label carefully - none of those extra goodies are allowed.

 

[dr.h00k]

...I believe Sunshine # 4 is acceptable in a pinch, if one has trouble sourcing ProMix HP...cheerz...h00k......

 

[Doc Bud]

Holy moly Amy! That plant is what every plant should look like at 14 days. Not that many do. Mine never .

Beautiful pics. Looks like you and the camera are speaking the same language.

There's no reason all of your plants can't look like that......and even better.

I have billions of helpers in the soil who do all the hard work.....

 

[InTheShed]

Thanks for passing on InThe Shed's tip on freezing the bud rot bits for topicals

The full tip involves killing the botrytis using steam. Freezing is just until you have enough to make the process worthwhile. I had the whole tutorial as a blog post but until those come back, PM me if you want full instructions so I don't hijack Amy's good thing here .

 

[Amy Gardner]

No hijack Shed! You can share any cannabis related things in here that you like!

I was planning to go back to my old journal and seek out that link for Pyr0 at some stage!

@Pyr0 - here it is Shed’s steam cleaning of botrytis buds for topical oil.
First Grow - Outdoor Autoflower Blueberry & AK-47 In Pots With Dr. Earth Soil

And it’s funny, when you said not many plants look like my current charge at 14 days, my first thought was - they do if you mostly visit the high brix journals! They nearly always do... why I’m so excited It’s working! I’ve looked forward to this for a long time Ease, quality, organic, nutrient dense, mind blowing flavours! I got some of that with my own DIY attempt at high brix methods, flavours no one I know has experienced before. I keep telling them I’m only just getting started

 

[InTheShed]

No hijack Shed! You can share any cannabis related things in here that you like!

I was planning to go back to my old journal and seek out that link for Pyr0 at some stage!

@Pyr0 - here it is Shed’s steam cleaning of botrytis buds for topical oil.
First Grow - Outdoor Autoflower Blueberry & AK-47 In Pots With Dr. Earth Soil

And it’s funny, when you said not many plants look like my current charge at 14 days, my first thought was - they do if you mostly visit the high brix journals! They nearly always do... why I’m so excited It’s working! I’ve looked forward to this for a long time Ease, quality, organic, nutrient dense, mind blowing flavours! I got some of that with my own DIY attempt at high brix methods, flavours no one I know has experienced before. I keep telling them I’m only just getting started

Thanks for saving me the searching! And time to start searching through the high brix threads I reckon .

 

[Amy Gardner]

Hmmm... trying to remember where i started, or a good spot to give you a quick overview...

@InTheShed this is probably as good a place to start as any...

What is Brix?
The Four Foundations

Then the joint journal that doc did with DS, which I’m referencing as I go here too. I’ll seek out the summary posts for you. It goes for pages of chatter with no action for a while at the start, because well, there’s nothing to do for about a month after planting!

 

[InTheShed]

Hmmm... trying to remember where i started, or a good spot to give you a quick overview...

I would think a quick search for high brix will give me a lot of places to look through!

 

[Amy Gardner]

Updates that post with another link...

 

[InTheShed]

Updates that post with another link...

 

[Amy Gardner]

I wanted to come back and follow this up properly in case anyone else happens by who might be interested in high brix farming and hasn’t come across it, or the notion of a “living soil”, before.

If it’s the DB High Brix kit you’re interested in, know that the kit contains everything needed to make what is described by the words ‘soil food web’, with very little effort from the farmer . Moreover, @Doc Bud ’s kit is specifically, through years of R&D, optimised to provide a soil food web fine tuned to growing cannabis. This fine tuning gets better with each cycle too (to a point) as the roots and leaves of the plant are recycled. As @Duggan has put it, training the soil to grow cannabis

So I think the best place to start (or at least an excellent place), if you’re totally new to it, is with Dr Elaine Ingham, a pioneering researcher in the field of soil science, on the soil-food web... remember, LOS gardeners work to sustain this themselves with various soil amendments and teas etc. Doc’s kit has all this sorted for you, and then some...

(I originally had a link here - but I’ve found a version I can embed here, I think... let’s see - ok it works best in full screen mode, Vimeo clips behave strangely)

Excerpt from “The Symphony of the Soil”

The ‘then some’ I mentioned above is because when you add a high brix approach to this, less emphasis is put on getting organic matter into the soil and more emphasis goes into the mineral content and balance (ratio is everything here). So as Doc says, we want a micro herd that likes to eat rocks, not sugar. In this way the high brix soils seek to create the balance found in tropical volcanic soils, or those found in some regions of Europe too (eh Conradino ), and likely other places that I don’t know about.

So high brix farming is both different and similar to LOS (Living Organic Soil) methods and both are premised on maintaining the soil life and letting that take care of the plants’ health.

High brix is the way wine grape growers do it, and some hops growers too, and plenty of food growers too (more and more). I was fully and forever sold on what Doc was trying to do when I read him (last year while trawling old journals) saying that it just makes sense to treat cannabis like fine wine.

Hell yeah


Plus, now we have @LadyGaea taking things to a whole new level with food and beverage pairings for different cannabis! Inspired

I hope some folks who might not have seen her before enjoy the Elaine Ingham video (like I said - the vid is the first image, it’s kinda easy to miss it and scroll past, esp. on a phone).

And I’m not dissing LOS - it’s fantastic too (Van Stank’s and Bobrown’s gardens are testaments to this). And mineralised LOS is a great way to grow - I loved it! But I think I love this kit approach more.

I may employ the other at times again too... down the track...

 

[Derbybud]

Thanks for that Amy.

 

[InTheShed]

What Derby said .

 

[Amy Gardner]

It was SweetSue that got me started down the LOS path, followed closely by Dr Ingham so I thought I’d share... it was a short step from LOS to interest in what Doc was/is doing. We employ many LOS principles in our food garden too - along with some biodynamics and, more recently, targeted mineralisation for calcium ratios... which led to honestly the best iceberg lettuce I’ve ever eaten (among other things - but I’m a big fan of iceberg in the summertime )