pH in Organic Super Soil, how exactly does it work?

[732002]

Regarding 'cooking' the soil mix I am not sure that it needs to sit and rest for as long as some think. Probably only a week or two should be sufficient. Lately I have been letting the compost component sit for several weeks which seems to be long enough for the microbe colonies to start breaking down some of the organic material. Then when the soil is mixed the micro-organisms can start working on the amendments.

My thoughts exactly, sure it takes time to completely break down but it starts early and a small plant that has just been up potted doesn't need much at first. Besides I recycle my dirt so there already are nutrients in there from the last grow.

OP, Buying individual amendments seems way too complicated especially starting out, a blended organic fertilized will likely give better coverage of your plants needs compare to the few ingredients you are using. Your plants look fine.

 

[Emilya Green]

I am curious if you built the SubCool's Supersoil you mentioned before or after you started putting together the 'watering a potted plant' thread which I believe you started around 2016. Is it possible that if a new batch was built today with the same recipe would it do better today after only 2 weeks of cooking because the watering method between the start of the grow and the start of flowering is more finely tuned than it was back then.

It was more like 2011 when I wrote my first version of the watering thread and released it to the world on 2 other forums. It didn't appear on this forum until several years later when I decided to take a more active role here and stop lurking. My first supersoil was years later, when I finally gave up on synthetic nutes and took the plunge to go organic.

New soil needs to be cooked for 2-3 months. There is no shortcut to that. Yes, the cooking does continue if you start using that soil early, but not everything converts at the same rate, so the early soil might be rich in one nutrient while the other is still not available. i learned my lesson by starting early and now fully understand that cooking takes months to make a stable soil and I dont think watering practices have anything to do with it. It's more about how long it takes for the 3 very powerful humic acids to break down organic materials and congeal them into this thing we call soil. Until that happens, all you have is soil with random nutrients floating around in it, and that is not conducive to the organic feeding cycle.

Please do not use banana peels with any plant or compost intended in any means for consumption by human or animals. One of the single greatest toxic poison people are regularly exposed to in their home environment is banana spider poison. Banana peels are unsuitable for use as a component in any secondary application.

Regarding your post with warnings against banana spider poison.... give me a break. The day I see a banana spider is the day I probably give up having bananas in my kitchen, but so far so good... I haven't been poisoned yet, have not seen a spider in 43 years, and I eat a lot of bananas. Banana peels have been used for a long time in the garden for a natural and easy source of potassium. What would you suggest as an alternative?

Your warnings about the proper pH being 6.5 has also been refined over these years since that ancient chart you shared came out, and we now know that the best pH to adjust to when using synthetic nutes is 6.3, at the low end of the "range" so that with upward drift the pH moves through the entire range of 6.3-6.8... if you start at 6.5 you miss the entire bottom half! But here is the most important point... PH does not factor into an organic grow. Your advice is valid for synthetic grows only.

 

[KingJohnC]

Regarding your post with warnings against banana spider poison.... give me a break. The day I see a banana spider is the day I probably give up having bananas in my kitchen, but so far so good... I haven't been poisoned yet, have not seen a spider in 43 years, and I eat a lot of bananas. Banana peels have been used for a long time in the garden for a natural and easy source of potassium. What would you suggest as an alternative?

You have miss read. Please re read my post to clarify.

There are only 2 methods in use where bananas are harvested and arrive in north America.

a) Banana bunches are harvested in small amount and allowed to sit for months on end to make certain no poisonous spiders are present. If it is suspected banana spiders may be present the bananas are allowed to sit months longer until the cargo employees fear of death has been overcome, if not the bananas are left to rot.

b) The poison is applied to the banana bunches on the trees so that the bananas may be harvested. The banana spiders have developed great tolerance to the poison coating bananas and are still commonly found in north America by grocery store employees. The spots on a banana that appear as the banana ripens are not natural but the necrotic tissue exposed to the poison coating on the banana peels.

You probably have been to a large grocery chain and never questioned why the small banana bunches have large black patches and usually have mould covering the stem and upper area of the banana bunches. The the same fruit from same variety trees and are organic bananas untreated with poison and months older than the yellow bananas adjacent which only arrived which shall change from green to spotted in less than 14 days from exposure to poison. Both are displayed as a public service by the grocery chain.

Had i meant the spiders found in banana plantations I would have written banana spider venom.

The alternative source for potassium is potash. Either wood ash or mined forms of potash.

Your warnings about the proper pH being 6.5 has also been refined over these years since that ancient chart you shared came out, and we now know that the best pH to adjust to when using synthetic nutes is 6.3, at the low end of the "range" so that with upward drift the pH moves through the entire range of 6.3-6.8... if you start at 6.5 you miss the entire bottom half! But here is the most important point... PH does not factor into an organic grow. Your advice is valid for synthetic grows only.

You have miss read. Please re read my post to clarify.

The third photograph the left cannabis plant is displaying a magnesium deficiency by the upward curled leaf edges.
The third photograph the left cannabis plant is displaying a calcium deficiency by the dimpled area adjacent to the leaves edges. The third photograph the left cannabis plant may be displaying an early potassium deficiency.

If you continue to use the current grow medium you shall have to adjust the pH of either the water source and or the nutrient mixture to pH 5.8 for soilless grow mediums.

NASA or the The National Aeronautics and Space Administration have done extensive investigation into soil, soil quality and methods of producing nutritious food.

Only healthy earth or active soil is soil, any other mater does not buffer or behave to actively change which preferred simple or complex chemical bond is preferably present at pH ranges usable to most plants.

Across a pH range the active form of chemical bonds reform natural or artificially by excess individual elements Oxidation reduction and the chemical for of elements changes.

these unstable pH swing are at cause by excessively high individual elements which reform chemical bonds which raise pH until either the element is reduced or another chemical bond plummets the grow mediums pH creating vegetative tissue damage either expressed by either deficits or necrotic tissue.

This complex system is called the nitrogen cycle and is present in every ecosystem in nature. Please see Nitrogen cycle. The system is based on concentrations of nitrogen become toxic in the environment and are either converted to or from more complex combinations to reduce the toxicity of individual concentration nitrogen or ammonium itself.

Depending in which environment system the nitrate nitrogen ammonium will have 5 - 7 intermediary steps in changing simple quick energy forms into longer stable forms.

Nitrogen fixation (N2 to NH3/ NH4+ or NO3-)
Nitrification (NH3 to NO3-)
Assimilation (Incorporation of NH3 and NO3- into biological tissues)
Ammonification (organic nitrogen compounds to NH3)
Denitrification(NO3- to N2)

Nitrate, nitrites, nitrogen and ammonium.

Nitrification , nitrate reduction to ammonium and Ammonification

Yes certain plants are able to directly access ammonium but not until the soil pH is above pH 8.6 - 9.4 and then above pH 11 or bellow pH 4. These pH ranges are outside of the optimal growing pH band for cannabis and while cannabis is potentially able to directly adsorb ammonium from a grow medium the ammonium crystals will cause visible leaf damage as well display other deficiency due to high pH imbalance.

The pH nutrient assimilation availability chart which I have posted is accurate to visualize the narrow band where either soil or soilless mediums are in use cannabis plants can actively access their nutrient requirements. We are able to visualize the narrow range where the elements are available but the actual chemical bonds are not expressed.

60% peat moss / coco coir = not soil inert

40 manure / earth worm castings = not soil, active

Manure and earthworm castings are possible components of healthy active earth but individually lacks any pH buffering ability earth as its catalytic environment where it is slowly converted to non harmful concentrations.

Outside of controlled laboratory settings for limited time periods the only self sustaining energy storage energy supply system where the sum energy output exceeds the sum total individual components ever discovered on earth is healthy earth or active soil.

When it comes to healthy earth or active soil anything that the naked eye can distinguish is not soil.

 

[bobrown14]

My attention span is short... we compost banana peels all the time every day all year every year since I've been composting so 50+ years or so... so far no problems.

I like my soil pH to be around 7.0pH getting below that and heavy metals become more mobile in the soil solution. This is a thing with cannabis and something to be aware of for health and its being tested for.

The 7.0pH is SOIL pH and not from run-off either. Runoff pH is meaningless.

 

[KingJohnC]

Measuring the pH of the first liquid runoff is a diagnostic tool to determine if it is unused or excessive salt buildup which is artificially raising pH of the soil above ideal pH nutrient availability and at cause for creation of more complex chemical bonds refereed to as nutrient lockout range which are more complex for the plant to access which also raise the soils pH. These less desirable chemical bonds also are at cause for the lack of pH stability in grow mediums we see the pH continually climbing and either leaf damage indicating nutrient deficiency's while overabundance of other elements may be present. Determining the individual chemical bond constituents requires much more complex test for soil analysis and is usually unnecessary unless a large field is tested. Using reference distilled water with at 7 pH we can measure the reactive change from what is present in the grow medium to determine how what is present in the grow medium alters and reacts to either supplied water or nutrient solutions to visualize the interaction present in the grow medium.

 

[SmokingWings]

Had i meant the spiders found in banana plantations I would have written banana spider venom.

The when I read the first msg that brought up the banana spiders I knew you were talking about the possible use of a pesticide.

However, I can not grasp that the bananas take months from the time of harvest to the fruit section at a grocery store. The travel time and the time in storage from a Central American county to the US or another country is weeks, mostly 4 to 6.

As for the brown spots or areas developing on the peel my belief is that it is caused by the breakdown of the organic matter in the peel and stem and not some adverse reaction to a chemical that was applied weeks earlier.

Possible interesting trivia about bananas....
* Without bananas we would not have banana boats.
* Bananas are a fruit and so are tomatoes.
* The most popular fruit in the world is the tomato.
* The most popular fruit in the US is the banana.
* All those bananas come from one tree.
* I have a banana for breakfast about 3 days a week but I doubt than anyone finds that interesting

Carry on & have a good day.

 

[KingJohnC]

The when I read the first msg that brought up the banana spiders I knew you were talking about the possible use of a pesticide.

However, I can not grasp that the bananas take months from the time of harvest to the fruit section at a grocery store. The travel time and the time in storage from a Central American county to the US or another country is weeks, mostly 4 to 6.

As for the brown spots or areas developing on the peel my belief is that it is caused by the breakdown of the organic matter in the peel and stem and not some adverse reaction to a chemical that was applied weeks earlier.
Carry on & have a good day.

You should seek out an authority for a qualified answer. The majority of people in north America carry on a simple care free lifestyle until duty accountability responsibility forces altered behaviour. A personal belief without qualified information to form its basis is only speculation. Proceed as you perceive prudent.

 

[SmokingWings]

You should seek out an authority for a qualified answer. The majority of people in north America carry on a simple care free lifestyle until duty accountability responsibility forces altered behaviour. A personal belief without qualified information to form its basis is only speculation. Proceed as you perceive prudent.

Not a problem. Any suggested web sites to start the research at?

 

[KingJohnC]

Either a person whose originates from a place where there are banana plantations who they or their family are directly employed in the banana harvests or an importer who may have knowledge on the harvest procedures and toxic chemical used before and during harvest. Customs and import regulations, Boarder services may provide guidance as these are treated with hazardous chemicals and may contain foreign fauna or invasive species.