Plant Alchemy With KNF: Korean Natural Farming And Jadam

[Azimuth]

Awesome! Smells are subjective to an individual. For me there's nothing better than a salt marsh at low tide. My wife thinks it's wretched though. I have awesome childhood memories growing up by the river.Chunky Cherry Thai today. WooPa!

Nice!

 

[Azimuth]

I started some JMS (Jadam Microbial Solution) tonight as an experiment to further test my hypothesis that worm castings are a good substitute for leaf mold for Jadam purposes. I ran a batch earlier this spring with leaf mold so I know mostly what I'm looking for.

Basically, I heated a potato in the microwave, mashed it up with a bit of sea salt and put it in a 1 gallon paint strainer bag with a heaping tablespoon of my fresh RWC (Red Worm Castings) and suspended it about midway down a 5 gallon bucket. Then I filled it with rain water, massaged the bag to get the mixture out into the water, put a lid on the bucket and set it outside in the garden.

Assuming I get the action I'm expecting, this weekend I plan another experiment to test the speed and efficiency of RWC vs. leaf mold.

Should be fun.

 

[Azimuth]

Having not seen any ill effects to my houseplants, I took the Jadam plunge and watered the girls with the same Horsetail Fern JLF, diluted at 1:30 with rain water. Looking forward to them not dying overnight.

And so it begins...

 

[NuttyProfessor]

Nice work !
I also will do a microbe tea today , rather than me going looking for the right microbes I can now take a half cup from each ferment barrel I have brewing and a hand full from each compost pile for the biggest diversity as this is where I inoculated mostly , saves me driving 25 miles to a forest

 

[Azimuth]

Nice!

Do you find worm castings in your leaf mold, or are the microbes they bring something totally different?

It seems to me that all microbes are all around us everywhere and, although different ones dominate certain places, that as long as you can somehow culture the ones you want, that they will outcompete the others leaving you what you want.

Since I want microbes that break organic material down, it seems like starting with them from my worm bin is a good place to begin.

I know the book preaches the diversity angle but I don't fully understand the theory behind it, I guess.

I suppose with diversity might come some microbes that could flourish in the environment you are introducing them into and that would be beneficial, but my thought is why not start with those specializing in what you want in the first place.

 

[Azimuth]

I started some JMS (Jadam Microbial Solution) tonight as an experiment to further test my hypothesis that worm castings are a good substitute for leaf mold for Jadam purposes. I ran a batch earlier this spring with leaf mold so I know mostly what I'm looking for.

The JMS from RWC so far is a total success. Even faster and better foaming than the leaf mold versions I made in the past. Granted it's a bit warmer now so not complete apples to apples comparison, but plenty good enough for me.

The foam is an indication that the microbes are active, and the abundance of it suggests an uber amount of them.

Now for the real test - watering the garden with it plus the swamp juice that's been doing its thing for the past week. The book says the "manufacturing period is at least 10 days" and then it gets better with time. It's been 7 days so far, but close enough for me for a test.

I found an old kitchen ladle that holds 5oz, which is ideal. If I put two ladle fulls, or 10 oz, into a 2 gal bucket (or 256 oz) I get a dilution rate of 1:25. Perfect, as suggested dilution rates are 1:20-300 so I'll be giving the garden mostly full strength.

So I'm going to give it a go and once again am looking forward to my plants not dying. Assuming it goes well over the next week or so, the RWC's will probably be my GoTo for the JMS. Since I keep an active worm bin in my basement it's much more convenient than trying to find microbes from "up in the mountains" somewhere, plus the visible results of the bucket activity suggests it's much more active. And worm castings are one of the primo ingredients in AACT, which is a similar activity.

So I'll water the garden in the next day or so and see how it goes over with the plants. This time I'm starting with the vegetable garden before I try it on my girls.

Next up is an experiment to determine the speed and efficiency of leaf mold vs. RWC in breaking down plant material to release the goodies it contains.

 

[Azimuth]

Let the magic begin!

Today I watered the outside garden with my JMS and swamp juice, so I'm excited to see what others are raving about.

My watering can holds about 2 gallons/8L, so for each can I added 2 gallons of rain water, 10 oz of swamp juice (1:25 dilution rate) and 20 oz of JMS (a little less than 1:10 dilution rate). I made about 4 gallons of JMS and only used a small amount of it so I added the leftovers including the potato remnants to the swamp juice barrel. That should get things jumping over there.

Assuming all goes tremendously well, the next major step will be watering my ladies. But that will likely be next week at the earliest.

But, so far, so good!

 

[Azimuth]

Today I began my Leaf Mold Soil vs. RWC experiment.

Specifically, I want to compare the rates of plant material breakdown both in terms of speed and completeness of the three samples in the study. The experiment consist of three jars crammed full with dandelion leaves and roots in identical weights.

Jar 1 has rain water only and is the control
Jar 2 has rain water and leaf mold soil
Jar 3 has rain water and my worm castings (RWC)

The leaf mold soil and worm castings were added in identical weights. The leaf mold soil was not as moist as the RWC so there was a larger quantity used.

The material in all three jars was covered in rain water also in identical weights.

To be fair, my leaf mold soil is probably not the best example going of the stuff so it may very well not be a fair fight. On the other hand I am staying true to the principles of Jadam in that I am using inputs that are local to me.

I plan to weigh the remaining plant material at some point to determine the winner. I'm hoping, and frankly expecting, it to be the RWC because that is readily available to me in whatever quantities I need.

But, we will observe the scientific method and have objective measures to determine the results.

 

[Azimuth]

@StoneOtter Tonight I'm going to take another step in my Jadam journey and give the plants the full works. I've gone in measured steps so far to try to ensure that each addition to the process is not detrimental to the plants. Bode and Nutty both rave about the boost that the JMS provides, so I'm looking forward to seeing some positive effect on my plants.

So, tonight they get JMS + Swamp Juice. The JMS will be at a 1:10 dilution, and the Swamp Juice will be 1:20.

Incidentally, I've discovered a great way to scale down the JMS for my garden. Since it is recommended to use a 10% solution, I've found making a full 5 gallon bucket pretty wasteful, though I did pour the excess (most of what I made) into the swamp juice barrel last time.

Since I'll need about a gallon (128 oz) to water my plants, that means I only need about 12oz of JMS, so constantly making 5 gallons of the stuff is more effort than I'd be willing to put in on a regular basis.

Two days ago I dissolved 1/4 tsp of worm castings into 8oz of rain water and added 1 tsp of dried potato flakes from a box. The flakes have some preservatives in them so I was not optimistic about the chances for success, but was willing to try the experiment.

Wow, am I glad I did! It worked great, and is sitting on the counter producing a copious amount of bubbles. So easy, and now I'll be able to have a low effort, appropriately sized, ongoing supply of fresh JMS in a small container right in my grow cabinet.

 

[StoneOtter]

@StoneOtter Tonight I'm going to take another step in my Jadam journey and give the plants the full works. I've gone in measured steps so far to try to ensure that each addition to the process is not detrimental to the plants. Bode and Nutty both rave about the boost that the JMS provides, so I'm looking forward to seeing some positive effect on my plants.

So, tonight they get JMS + Swamp Juice. The JMS will be at a 1:10 dilution, and the Swamp Juice will be 1:20.

Incidentally, I've discovered a great way to scale down the JMS for my garden. Since it is recommended to use a 10% solution, I've found making a full 5 gallon bucket pretty wasteful, though I did pour the excess (most of what I made) into the swamp juice barrel last time.

Since I'll need about a gallon (128 oz) to water my plants, that means I only need about 12oz of JMS, so making 5 gallons of the stuff is more effort than I'd be willing to put in on a regular basis.

Two days ago I dissolved 1/4 tsp of worm castings into 8oz of rain water and added 1 tsp of dried potato flakes from a box. The flakes have some preservatives in them so I was not optimistic about the chances for success, but was willing to try the experiment.

Wow, am I glad I did! It worked great, and is sitting on the counter producing a copious amount of bubbles. So easy, and now I'll be able to have a low effort, appropriately sized, ongoing supply of fresh JMS in a small container right in my grow cabinet.

Potato flakes for the win then! That simplifies things a step or two. Good luck feeding!

 

[Azimuth]

It's now been a couple of days since I watered my girls with full strength JMS + Swamp Juice and I must say they are looking pretty good. The previous round was at a more diluted strength and the leaves definitely looked like they needed something more so I went from a 1:30 dilution to a full strength 1:20 solution and that seemed to improve things. The leaves had been lighter in color than I would have wanted and showed signs of calcium deficiency so it looks like they need more than the dandelions can provide, at least at the weaker strength.

Also, my Swamp Juice is pretty young and is supposed to get better with age as more of the plant material dissolves into solution so I suspect it will have increasing impact as time goes on.

So, so far I'm very pleased with what I'm seeing on the Jadam front.

As for my KNF extractions (willow, horsetail fern, banana, kelp) its now been about a month so I think I've gotten most of the juices I'm going to get from the plant material. Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed in the amount I got as I expected more of the material to breakdown over time. I'll know quantities better later on today as I'm going to filter out the plant material and store the juices for later use.

I'm planning to take the remaining plant material and turn it into a Jadam extract using my worm castings. The remaining material may be mostly cellulose if the knf sugars did their job, but well see.

In the "Regenerative Grower's Guide" the author talks about doing subsequent extractions using vinegar so I'm not exactly blazing new ground with this next experiment.

On it goes.

 

[Azimuth]

Today I began my Leaf Mold Soil vs. RWC experiment.

Specifically, I want to compare the rates of plant material breakdown both in terms of speed and completeness of the three samples in the study. The experiment consist of three jars crammed full with dandelion leaves and roots in identical weights.

Jar 1 has rain water only and is the control
Jar 2 has rain water and leaf mold soil
Jar 3 has rain water and my worm castings (RWC)

The leaf mold soil and worm castings were added in identical weights. The leaf mold soil was not as moist as the RWC so there was a larger quantity used.

The material in all three jars was covered in rain water also in identical weights.

To be fair, my leaf mold soil is probably not the best example going of the stuff so it may very well not be a fair fight. On the other hand I am staying true to the principles of Jadam in that I am using inputs that are local to me.

I plan to weigh the remaining plant material at some point to determine the winner. I'm hoping, and frankly expecting, it to be the RWC because that is readily available to me in whatever quantities I need.

But, we will observe the scientific method and have objective measures to determine the results.

I made some adjustments today to the experiment since I wasn't getting the breakdown results I expected. Things are going much too slowly but I now know why.

When I set up the jars I packed them tightly with material to the brim of the jar and filled with the respective solutions. This was a mistake, and I know that because at the time of the experiment I also set up a fourth jar with the remaining plant material and the RWC solution. Since I didn't have enough material to fill the jar, I put what I had remaining in and added water to cover the material.

This is the best jar of the group and the only one proceeding as expected.

Lessons learned:
1) Don't pack the material in too densely as that results in not being able to add enough water to keep things in solution as the material starts to break down
2) Add enough water to keep everything submerged during the process
3) Leave an air gap between the top of the water and the lid to allow for the gases to vent. The KNF folks suggest leaving a third of the container free and thats probably a reasonable level here as well.

So, I added more solution to each of the jars to cover the plant material; rain water for jar 1, rain water + leaf mold soil for jar 2, and rain water + RWC for jar 3, while also leaving a sufficient air gap between the water and the jars' covers.

I'm about a week behind expected results but, with today's additions I expect to be back on track.

The limited results so far do show the expected progression with jar 3 the best, followed by jar 2 and then jar 1, but the breakdown isn't far enough along to be definitive.

 

[Rexer]

Hi Azimuth, I've kind of been lurking your thread here. Great reading, and learning. I'm not a soil guy, but have followed Proff's thread vigilantly- some of it has even stuck.

Love what you two are doing!

 

[Azimuth]

Thanks, Rex. And you're always welcome. I've been learning some interesting things and thought I'd share them for anyone else that might have an interest. It's pretty cool what you can do to make your own organic ferts and pest controls.

I've got a few more experiments planned, and then I'll probably do a "conclusions" post of what I'll likely end up using for my grows.

Nutty's in neck deep on all this. I'm just getting started. A big part of the fun of growing for me is learning new ways of doing things and, with this plant, there seems to be an endless amount of variations on a theme.

I wonder if some of this approach would translate over to your world of hydro.?

 

[Rexer]

Thanks, Rex. And you're always welcome. I've been learning some interesting things and thought I'd share them for anyone else that might have an interest. It's pretty cool what you can do to make your own organic ferts and pest controls.

I've got a few more experiments planned, and then I'll probably do a "conclusions" post of what I'll likely end up using for my grows.

Nutty's in neck deep on all this. I'm just getting started. A big part of the fun of growing for me is learning new ways of doing things and, with this plant, there seems to be an endless amount of variations on a theme.

I wonder if some of this approach would translate over to your world of hydro.?

Thanks for the warm welcome! I think I could eventually make it work...Nutty has been on the edge of it in his organic coco. We've talked about it, and I'm sure it's doable. Right now I use beneficial bacteria, as many others do, I have noticed benefits of it and love the idea of organics (and yes i know there's worlds of differences).

I've got the space for it now, and eventually want to do some Aquaponics...Basically become more self sufficient. But so many project wants, and no where near enough money to do them all.

I'm still new to soil gardening and as I'm gardening veggies in soil finally (everything I grow is hydro) I'm paying more attention then ever.

Sorry for the ramble lol.

 

[Azimuth]

Thats pretty cool. I built an aquaponics system a few years ago. That has to be totally organic otherwise you kill the fish.

I did mine with only two outlets, one for the lights and the other for the pump. Mine is a flood and drain using the Hydroton clay balls, a bell siphon, and a venturi to oxygenate the water for the fish. My only inputs are fish food and some of my organic ferts.

My water is pumped up from a holding tank that is lower than everything else. It is pumped through tubing that has the venturi in it and dumps into the fish tank. Then flows by gravity into a settling tank for the solid wastes and then by gravity into the grow beds which drain with the bell siphons back into the sump tank. And then around it goes again.

Kind of an interesting system.

 

[Rexer]

Thats pretty cool. I built an aquaponics system a few years ago. That has to be totally organic otherwise you kill the fish.

I did mine with only two outlets, one for the lights and the other for the pump. Mine is a flood and drain using the Hydroton clay balls, a bell siphon, and a venturi to oxygenate the water for the fish. My only inputs are fish food and some of my organic ferts.

My water is pumped up from a holding tank that is lower than everything else. It is pumped through tubing that has the venturi in it and dumps into the fish tank. Then flows by gravity into a settling tank for the solid wastes and then by gravity into the grow beds which drain with the bell siphon back into the sump tank. And then around it goes again.

Kind of an interesting system.

That's pretty much exactly what I had in mind. Keeps it simple and is effective from my reading (and YouTube of course)

What kind of fish are you raising? And what size of tank are they in? Oh the millions of questions I could pester you with on that subject . But that project won't happen for a year or two. New place, just getting settled in still, so don't worry you're safe there...for now

 

[Azimuth]

Its a countertop system and I'm only raising goldfish. It was more for the learning experience and proof of concept. Easy to scale up and raise edible fish, though. I'd probably go with tilapia if I were to do that.

I think my two grow tubs are 20gal ea, and the sump tank maybe 30gal, and both the fish tank and settling tank are 7gal.

It does much better with greens than it does with plants with flowers. That's why I'm supplementing the fish wastes with my ferts, to try and get the flowers going which is necessary if you want to grow anything with fruits like cukes or tomatoes.

 

[Bode]

Highya Azimuth,

It's fun getting all the things in place! I finally have a bucket of JLF that works well. I forget to add plant material to it sometimes. I'm wondering what to do with it this fall, when it starts freezing? SongYoung Cho was in Korea, and it freezes there in the winter (northern part). He never said anything about that. Probably should take it down, then start it back up in the spring. Can't have that smell in the house, lol!! I like your project journal. I think about some of the same things that you do. Happy Smokin'

 

[Azimuth]

Highya Azimuth,

It's fun getting all the things in place! I finally have a bucket of JLF that works well. I forget to add plant material to it sometimes. I'm wondering what to do with it this fall, when it starts freezing? SongYoung Cho was in Korea, and it freezes there in the winter (northern part). He never said anything about that. Probably should take it down, then start it back up in the spring. Can't have that smell in the house, lol!! I like your project journal. I think about some of the same things that you do. Happy Smokin'

Hey Bode,

I was thinking about winter storage as well. My JLF bucket is 20 gal, so I think what I'm going to do is strain out the liquid into (4) 5 gal buckets and put lids on them and store them in the cellar. They sell screw on lids if the stink gets loose, but stay tuned for some upcoming experiments where I try to deal with that issue.

I'm hoping the vast majority of the plant material will have broken down and it will be mostly all liquid, but I'll probably leave whatever solids remain in the bucket to freeze and thaw. I figure that will help rupture any remaining cell walls and make it easier to break down next season. Or I might just put the spent plant material on the garden and see if if it breaks down easily that way. I'll probably end up doing both just to see how they each work.

One of the challenges with periodically throwing plant material and water in the barrel is the strength of the brew can be constantly changing which makes it hard to keep application doses the same strength. One way I try to have a more stable end product is I always add new material to a bucket first, then cover it with rain water and then add it to the barrel. Since I always add just enough water to cover the material in the bucket, whatever gets added should be roughly the same dilution as what was previously added.

I agree with you that it has been fun learning this new process and putting all of the pieces in place. I've got a new experiment I'll likely start tomorrow, so I'll post that up when I get it started.

Thanks for stopping by.

Azi