Keffkas Seedsman Comparative: Purple Ghost Candy

[JiggiLotus]

That's an area I'm very familiar with.... Fought that battle for about 8 years. Hope you have an easy go of it this time; that is not an easy hiccup to deal with.

Reach out if you ever need a friend

I too understand this demon. You have a shoulder here if ya ever need it.

 

[Azimuth]

@Azimuth @Gee64 @Stunger

Will the worms treat their bedding as a food source in relation to reproduction? Meaning, if theyre not getting enough food scraps from me, will their bedding allow them to keep reproducing or will their numbers be based on actual food sources?

The feeding of carefully selected materials is more for what we want out of the castings than nutrition for the worms, but what @Stunger says is on point. They'll consume the bedding and continue reproducing, just likely not at the rate they would have if everything was optimum.

 

[Keffka]

Whether I use use one of the commercially sold fibre coir worm blankets, or some pre-soaked cardboard, the worms eventually consume it.

As far as reproducing goes, I imagine that they self regulate their population where they don't reproduce as much if they have less food source. Which is what I presume happens on the occasions that I have been away for a couple of weeks, they just keep on rocking regardless.

So the bedding in my bin consists of 50% coco and 50% used soil. I then sprinkle in the amendments. At that point the bin is 3/4 of the way filled with coco, soil, and amendments. I then add my food scraps to the bin.

I’m still trying to figure out how much they eat, and how quickly. It seems like everything I’ve put in there, they’ve eaten it within a few days. I want to make sure that they’re still at least eating something while I lock down how much food scrap they eat daily.

The feeding of carefully selected materials is more for what we want out of the castings than nutrition for the worms, but what @Stunger says is on point. They'll consume the bedding and continue reproducing, just likely not at the rate they would have if everything was optimum.

The carefully selected stuff I’m most concerned with would be the amendments I’ve added, which seem to have not phased the worms at all. Beyond that, I’m not too picky about what they’ll eat, as long as they’re satisfied with it.

It’s a bit tricky figuring out exactly how much they’ll eat at this stage because I’m not even sure how many are in there and they seem to be mowing through everything I give them really fast.

 

[Azimuth]

It’s a bit tricky figuring out exactly how much they’ll eat at this stage because I’m not even sure how many are in there and they seem to be mowing through everything I give them really fast.

The rule of thumb is that they'll consume 50-100% of their bodyweight each day or so. So, if you ordered 1 pound of worms you can expect them to initially go through say 4-7 pounds of food a week. Then the population will adjust to what's actually provided and the space available.

Too much too soon and you'll get smells until the population increases enough to handle it. Figure about 3 months from start to when you're going to see the full cycle if you started from just cocoons. Starting with "banded breeders", you'll get cocoons quickly with will hatch with something like 3-10 baby worms which will take each new one 2-3 months to become sexually mature enough to produce cocoons themselves.

That's from memory but I could look it up if you want the detail.

 

[StoneOtter]

 

[Gee64]

Worms need roughly a 65/35 carbon/nitrogen ratio (browns to greens) just like compost does.

The shredded beddings and coco mats are meant to be comsumed. They are the browns.

So it comes down to quality of greens and browns. Paper and cardboard is carbon, but nothing else. Coco is excellent carbon on the carbon scale, and it contains nutrients too, so when it gets eaten nutes get released.

I prefer a layer of coco mix over news paper or expensive coco blankets.

Leaves are excellent browns but personally I don't put outside stuff into my worm farm. Some people sterilize leaves in boiling water, then use them.

Thats actually a really good input, just a pain in the ass, coco is easier. Safer too when you consider wives vs dirty leaves in the kitchen soup pot boiling away.

Weed stalks, avocado skins, anything woody is a carbon source. Fine bark mulch works. Rootballs are excellent carbon.

Carbon sources on average will hold 4 times their weight in water, so if your worms are too wet, lecheate running out alot, add more carbon. If your trays are constantly running dry, add less carbon next time.

Carbon is far denser than greens, so your 2:1 carbon:nitrogen ratio is by volume, not weight.

As for ingredients, if it can make your eyes water or is an animal product, don't feed it to the worms, so no ciitrus, onions, hot peppers, etc...



Your mineral mix to you is key, to the worms it's just grit. They need grit. If you think it's low on grit then more oyster shell flour is the best route, not adding more phosphate or traces. For phosphates and traces, stick with your balanced inputs that you figured out to sprinkle in.

EWC makes for a great top dressing, so if you have a favorite topdressing/spike mix that you use, add that to your worm farm so the EWC mineral levels are similarly balanced to your topdressing mix levels.

The worm farm is also a great place to start greensand decomp. Any slow release mineral is best added here.

Things like SRP and azomites or rock dusts should only be ratioed the same as they are in the global soil mix you flower in.

Fun fact: If you have ever tried starting an avocado pit by using toothpicks and a glass of water, a worm farm will sprout them way better.

Bury them 2/3 deep in a corner of the tray and in about a month they will have a huge taproot into the tray. Pop them out and plant at that point, buried 2/3 deep in potting soil.

Mango seeds too.

I find that any squashes, pumpkins, or gourd-like veggies are the worms favorite greens. I use a lot of kale too. I grow it in a tub in the lower light of the tent floor in the flower tent. I use used soil and flower soil to grow the kale making it a very nutritious input.

All my trim and clippings go in as well.

If you dry your fan leaves until they are brown, they are browns as the nitrogen has vented to atmosphere, but all the other goodies that you purchased to feed your plants, as in minerals, are still locked in those leaves.

If you flash freeze those leaves until use, or add them fresh, they are greens with the same good nutritional profile.

 

[Gee64]

I usually freeze all my greens in large ziplocks. That way it's easy to measure out a 2:1 ratio. 2 bags of browns to 1 bag of greens. I try for 2 bags of greens per tray.

Pumpkins and squashes, slice them into rings and lay on top, then cover in a thin layer of coco and stand back. In 3 days myco will be over an inch thick.

Also if you brew kombucha, worms really dig used scoby's.

Zucchini's, cut them in half end to end and lay them face down. 3 days later flip them over. They are filled with worms.

The more nutritious the food is for you, the more nutritious it is for the worms.

That translates to the soil quality.

Any outdoor fruit that is sealed, such as a pumpkin, is great if it's ripe, but if it's over ripe it will have fly eggs in it for sure, so no mushy pumpkins or gourds from the garden, only things of quality that you would eat.

Anything lesser is still great in the outdoor compost, but you don't want outdoor insects in the house.

I grow a few pumpkins every year just for the worms. I slice them and freeze them on a cookie tray, then transfer to a bag so I can pull out just a couple slices per tray.

Pumpkin, nutritionally speaking, is pretty much a superfood.

Every time I start another ziplock of scraps for the freezer I toss in a couple rings of frozen pumpkin or squash.

 

[Keffka]

16 mg later and I feel like myself again. For all my intelligence, I make really stupid decisions, like letting 16 mg be the difference between feeling normal and being completely incapacitated, and unable to function. Must be natures balance, they’ll give you intelligence but couple it with poor impulse control

Unless you absolutely need it (and I haven’t met anyone that does), no one should be taking 24 mg of suboxone per day. It’s a ludicrous amount I never should’ve started with and no one really needs if they’re truly trying to get sober. To be fair, I got out of the game before fentanyl took over so I have no idea what that detox is like, but I imagine it’s gotta at least be a little worse with how potent and short term it is.

Still, I would take an opiate detox over a benzo detox any day. Benzodiazepines are some of the sneakiest and most vicious drugs there are.

 

[Keffka]

I usually freeze all my greens in large ziplocks. That way it's easy to measure out a 2:1 ratio. 2 bags of browns to 1 bag of greens. I try for 2 bags of greens per tray.

Pumpkins and squashes, slice them into rings and lay on top, then cover in a thin layer of coco and stand back. In 3 days myco will be over an inch thick.

Also if you brew kombucha, worms really dig used scoby's.

Zucchini's, cut them in half end to end and lay them face down. 3 days later flip them over. They are filled with worms.

The more nutritious the food is for you, the more nutritious it is for the worms.

That translates to the soil quality.

Any outdoor fruit that is sealed, such as a pumpkin, is great if it's ripe, but if it's over ripe it will have fly eggs in it for sure, so no mushy pumpkins or gourds from the garden, only things of quality that you would eat.

Anything lesser is still great in the outdoor compost, but you don't want outdoor insects in the house.

I grow a few pumpkins every year just for the worms. I slice them and freeze them on a cookie tray, then transfer to a bag so I can pull out just a couple slices per tray.

Pumpkin, nutritionally speaking, is pretty much a superfood.

Every time I start another ziplock of scraps for the freezer I toss in a couple rings of frozen pumpkin or squash.

Rev talked a lot about pumpkin and pumpkin seeds in the third edition. It seems I have some reading to do on pumpkins.

 

[Keffka]

Updated shots of the crew. This is either Day 39, 40, or 41, I’ll have to go back and double check my posts and my calendar. Knowing that I was going to be underperforming for a few days, I dropped the light intensity to 25%. They all seem to have appreciated the break. I will start transplants this evening. Everyone got a fresh watering before lights off so they should still have some moisture left this evening.

I have multiple plants that are taller than I anticipated. I may wind up having to top them if I can’t get enough space to tie them down aggressively. We still have anywhere from 19-21 days left until Day 60 which is when I want to start bloom, so we have plenty of time to make a decision.

 

[Keffka]

One of the tells in my room for too much light is curved plant tips. I circled a few of the tips on this image

When I see that, I either move the plant or the light depending on the situation.

 

[Keffka]

Filled the first three 3 gallon flower pots for transplant. I laid down a cup of rabbit compost on the bottom, then added 1 tbsp of the Stonington plant food, 1 tbsp of kelp meal, and 1 tsp of fish bone meal. After finishing the bottom layer I threw a few cups of soil in the container, I will fill it completely when transplanting. I will be transplanting the two PGCs that are not topped. The topped PGC root systems haven’t filled their containers enough yet. Probably another 3 or 4 days, maybe a week. The third pot is for a Blue Thai female I have growing.

 

[Keffka]

Day 41 Before transplant

 

[Keffka]

The thing about hybrids is, you can never completely trust what’s going to happen. Currently I have an indica dominant hybrid growing with the PGCs. The indica dominant sprouted a day later than the PGCs, but it’s double the height and size of the next closest PGC.

I have it in a one gallon container and it is every bit of 3 feet tall. It dwarfs my untopped PGCs, and of course is much larger than the manifolded plants.

That’s one of the big reasons it’s difficult to identify a strain by its appearance. If you looked at the plant, you’d swear it was one of the sativa dominant PGCs but it’s just a really tall indica dominant, and it’s a female. I was positive it was going to be a male because it’s so much taller than the other plants, but nope. Since it was an indica dominant I was going to flower it untopped but if it went into stretch tomorrow it would likely breach my max height.

I don’t like topping a plant this close to flower, but my other choice is super cropping and I don’t like that either. This is very likely going to become an issue with the PGCs as well.

Everyone got much taller in their 1 gallons than I planned for. Typically two feet tall is pushing the limits of the container, 3 feet tall and I can’t even water the plant enough to sate its thirst. It’s all good though, I can work with extra growth. Having too much growth is a far better problem to have than not enough or unhealthy growth.

 

[Keffka]

I’ve delayed transplanting until this evening. The transplantees drained their containers in under 24 hours and I missed the window. So I watered them again a few minutes ago and set the new containers in the room. This evening when lights go on, I’ll transplant. Since I’m running the light at 25% right now, transplanting at lights on won’t be as much of an issue as it’s similar to an overcast day.

 

[Keffka]

Here’s a side view for the delay

After I took this picture I removed the blankets and bottom blockers I have for cooler weather. I’ll have to put them back up next weekend but I love the extra airflow so I don’t mind the extra work.

 

[WakkaDerpin]

Growing fast !

 

[Keffka]

Side shot!

Here’s the first transplant:

This has been one of my cleanest and most efficient fabric pot transplants. I lost less than 1/4 cup of soil pulling it from the bag and I can see roots right on the edge of the ball. That’s a great look and negates my bigger complaints about fabrics, especially because these plants have only been in these containers for 3 weeks. I don’t expect the same success with the topped plants.

I massaged the sides of the bag until I could feel the roots loosen from the sides. I then pushed slightly up all around the bottom until I could feel the bag give a little. I placed it on an upside down 1 gallon plastic and just gently tugged the bag down until it was all the way off. I did have to rip a few roots off that were stuck to the bottom but I get that in plastic too.

Once she was placed in the container I top dressed 1 tbsp Stonington plant food, 2 tsp kelp meal, and 1 tsp fish bone meal. I then drove a 1 inch hole into the container all the way to the bottom on opposite sides of the root ball closer to the container wall. I filled those holes up with a 1:1 mix of all purpose 4-4-4 and kelp meal. Probably took about 1/4 to a 1/2 cup to fill the holes, maybe less, it’s hard to tell and I’m not remeasuring lol.

Filled

I will add cannabis stems as mulch, then water tomorrow morning. I will repeat the same process with the other plants as well, except, Im still thinking about not spiking the topped plants.

I’m going to need to reconfigure my floor. 4 risers meant to hold 15 gallon pots isn’t efficient for multiple 3 and 5 gallon pots. Probably pull the crates out, I don’t like bags on the floor, it becomes a whole thing when watering daily.

 

[Keffka]

Transplant took and was back to work same day. Bloom is coming in about 2-3 weeks

 

[Keffka]

This morning, everyone is starting to show their flower colors, this is the most exciting time for me. Figuring out how to take a plant that wants to be 10 feet tall and making it appreciate being 5 feet: