Plant Alchemy With KNF: Korean Natural Farming And Jadam

[Azimuth]

0.3375 x 8 = 2.7

??

 

[Gee64]

A cup is 8 oz, so 0.3375 x 8 oz = 0.6 oz

8 x 0.3375 isn't .6. It's 2.7

 

[Azimuth]

8 x 0.3375 isn't .6. It's 2.7

Lol. Don't know how I got to that.

So I'm about 15T of the mineral component vs your 5? Or is your 5 only referring to calcium?

 

[Gee64]

Lol. Don't know how I got to that.

So I'm about 15T of the mineral component vs your 5? Or is your 5 only referring to calcium?

just calcium

 

[Azimuth]

just calcium

So I'm probably 2/3rds of your level of straight calcium as amendments and then more in the worm castings and then some in monthly adds of eggshells.

 

[Gee64]

So I'm probably 2/3rds of your level of straight calcium as amendments and then more in the worm castings and then some in monthly adds of eggshells.

I don't add egg shells but I do top dress EWC every 10 days, give or take.

 

[Azimuth]

I topdress castings weekly. How much would you say you add every 10 days? Right now I'm doing 1T/G.

 

[Gee64]

I topdress castings weekly. How much would you say you add every 10 days? Right now I'm doing 1T/G.

When I topdress a 10 gallon pot I add 1 tbsp of mineral mix, 1 slightly heaped solo cup of castings, and 1 heaped cup of Seasoil Mulch.

Thats over a 14" diameter pot surface, so figuring out the ratio per square inch of surface may be a better way to address it.

Then I mist it with a sprayer and let it sit for 24-48 hours until it goes crusty.

Then I break it up really well, which mixes the EWC and mulch, and water it in.

That gives me a total of 1/2" maximum thickness for the whole topdressing. You don't want too much or it will choke off oxygen, and you need to break it up with your fingers every couple days.

I'm pretty sure the solo cups I use are 16oz cups. I'll double check that for you once lights come on.

 

[Azimuth]

Ok thanks. Rough math says 16 oz over a 10 gallon pot size is about 3T per gallon and three times what I do. Adjusting for soil surface may lower that a bit and my cycle is 30% faster than yours but that gives me a decent idea.

I do fluff my mulch layer regularly as I like to keep it moist with daily misting to keep the upper feeder roots and their associated microbes engaged and not dormant by letting them dry out too often.

 

[Gee64]

My pots are a bit cylindrical as well. 16" tall I believe, so if your pot is wider you may have to use more to get coverage.

 

[Azimuth]

Mine are two gallon buckets so, 9" across I think.

And I only do a lighter dusting of the soil surface, no real depth to speak of. I add it right on top of the compost mulch layer and mist it in. Also use malted barley at the same time each week.

Something to look at.

 

[Gee64]

Right, small pots. Mine eat too fast for that approach.

I like what I read about malted barley, but man I have walked a lot of soil paths and Rev's mix with just a tweak or 2 is so reliable I don't want to upset the balance.

One day I am going to formulate my own soil completely from scratch but you are still finding out answers to questions I will have, so I'm gonna stick with my mix until you get it all figured out.

Yeah.... That's it!

 

[Azimuth]

Well, I'm finding out the issues and presenting them. You're the one answering your own questions. But I'm happy to provide a "field of play."

 

[StoneOtter]

Hi guys!

 

[Azimuth]

Hi guys!

Welcome back Stone!

 

[Azimuth]

I'm having great success with my new cloning approach and today was up-potting day. I took many more cuts than I needed and that allowed me to select the best of the best for potting.

This round I'm trying a few new things including giving them my WCA (Water Soluble Calcium) with every watering, and topdressing monthly with eggshells for the calcium, and weekly with my castings, malted barley, and now some of my comfrey crumble.

Using my new mix which is heavy in compost, I've have great looking plants all the way through veg and past stretch and then start to get yellowing, which was especially true of the mix with coco in it. By adding the WCA it seemed to slow/stop the deterioration, so I'll do that from the jump this time and see if I can make it further into flower.

After potting it up I top dressed with eggshell powder, malted barley, and comfrey crumble and scratched them in, but didn't mist them to activate just yet. I'll give them a few days to get settled before I do that and in a week or two will add a top dressing of castings and then cover it all with a compost mulch.

I'm hoping that the addition of the WCA, the eggshell powder and the comfrey crumble will further improve things as I got about midway through flower this last time before starting to see deficiencies.

 

[Gee64]

I'm having great success with my new cloning approach and today was up-potting day. I took many more cuts than I needed and that allowed me to select the best of the best for potting.

This round I'm trying a few new things including giving them my WCA (Water Soluble Calcium) with every watering, and topdressing monthly with eggshells for the calcium, and weekly with my castings, malted barley, and now some of my comfrey crumble.

Using my new mix which is heavy in compost, I've have great looking plants all the way through veg and past stretch and then start to get yellowing, which was especially true of the mix with coco in it. By adding the WCA it seemed to slow/stop the deterioration, so I'll do that from the jump this time and see if I can make it further into flower.

After potting it up I top dressed with eggshell powder, malted barley, and comfrey crumble and scratched them in, but didn't mist them to activate just yet. I'll give them a few days to get settled before I do that and in a week or two will add a top dressing of castings and then cover it all with a compost mulch.

I'm hoping that the addition of the WCA, the eggshell powder and the comfrey crumble will further improve things as I got about midway through flower this last time before starting to see deficiencies.

When you say every watering, do you mean in the reservoir or top watering?

 

[Azimuth]

When you say every watering, do you mean in the reservoir or top watering?

Both. I lightly top water with my Jadam concoctions once a week when I add my castings and malted barley (and now my comfrey crumble). But it's not a full watering up top, more like 1/4 of what I give, the rest goes down the fill pipe.

Then, during the week I monitor the reservoir and add water after it runs dry. I've found keeping the reservoir full all the time doesn't work as well for me, and doing it the way I do I get roots all the way to the bottom. But I also mist the compost mulch every day or two to keep the upper microbes active.

Don't know if that even matters but seems to work for me so I keep doing it.

 

[Azimuth]

I made up a new batch of soil today with yet another new recipe. This version is:

10 L
1P Leaf Mold
2P Worm castings
3P Compost
3P Old soil
1P Biochar
8T Stone Dust
2T Mineral mix (Azomite, Gypsum, Oyster Shell flour, Dusts of sand, stone, char, and eggshell)
2T Meals mix (Crustacean, Neem, Karanja, Malted barley)
2T Powdered Eggshells
8T Brown rice

And I'll dust the plant roots at planting with some Great White Myco (if I remember )

And please, no one tell @ReservoirDog that there's no perlite or any other aeration aggregate in the mix. He's got enough going on that I don't want him worrying about my plants.

Edit: But I'm not an idiot, I recognize that aeration is an important component so, after consulting with Mother Nature, I'm going to try using a half dozen worms to serve that function. Who knows, it might be even better as they tunnel around leaving air channels throughout the mix.

What it does do, however, is free up space for more compost in place of that aggregate in my small buckets and hopefully will get me further along into flower before deficiencies start showing up.

That's the plan.

Ok @Gee64 , it's been only about a week after potting up in my new mix and I'm already getting yellow leaves down low while the top, new leaves look great which reads and looks like an N deficiency. So I'd like your thoughts on what you think the cause may be. It's happening in all of the new pots, including the 9oz, 1L, and 2 gallon.

Last round the plants in the old mix looked great from the jump right past stretch. The changes this round were:

Eggshell Powder I added this new element to both my old soil bucket where it's been "cooking" for only 3-4 weeks, and raw to my new mix at a rate of 1T per gallon. I added it after reading of your results of adding your extra calcium without any apparent negative impact. Think it could be the only partially cooked egg shells from the old soil causing my issue?

 Rice I added 2 oz per gallon of soil of uncooked rice. I suppose it is possible that raw element is stealing early N in the process of breaking down, but it seems like the amount used should be too small to have that much impact that quickly.

Extra Compost I added a bigger percentage of compost to the mix this round but it's the same batch from last time, just 6 weeks more mature. The plants loved it last round so that shouldn't be it either.

No Perlite I replaced the perlite portion with the extra compost and substituted worms to hopefully aerate the mix. This is my guess as to the issue. Maybe the mix is too dense for atmospheric N to penetrate, and the worms haven't tunneled around enough. Also, I haven't yet added my top dressing of more castings, malted barley powder and compost, so the worms have no incentive to rise to the soil surface. Could it also be the microbes haven't gotten their shit together to hook up with the roots yet and deliver what the plants want? I did add myco at potting.

I know when building a compost pile the suggestion is to not go wider than about 3' since air will penatrate about 2' from each side. My pots are obviously smaller than that, although they are plastic sided, but they're only at most 9" tall so I would think air should be able to get in fine.

I haven't done anything else differently to the plants, and haven't even watered them yet as I make the mix moist when I pot them.

I'm not too worried about it, it just surprised me that the issue started so quickly. I am going to shift much of my comfrey crumble over from my worm bin to top dressing the plants weekly though I'll have to ration it as my comfrey planting is in its early stages and my harvest there wasn't as much as I'd like to have to spread it around, but hopefully by next season I'll have a surplus.

So, what are your thoughts on the early N issue? And hopefully no one will tell @keffja as he'll probably say I would already know the answer if I only changed one thing at a time.

 

[Gee64]

Ok @Gee64 , it's been only about a week after potting up in my new mix and I'm already getting yellow leaves down low while the top, new leaves look great which reads and looks like an N deficiency. So I'd like your thoughts on what you think the cause may be. It's happening in all of the new pots, including the 9oz, 1L, and 2 gallon.

Last round the plants in the old mix looked great from the jump right past stretch. The changes this round were:

Eggshell Powder I added this new element to both my old soil bucket where it's been "cooking" for only 3-4 weeks, and raw to my new mix at a rate of 1T per gallon. I added it after reading of your results of adding your extra calcium without any apparent negative impact. Think it could be the only partially cooked egg shells from the old soil causing my issue?

 Rice I added 2 oz per gallon of soil of uncooked rice. I suppose it is possible that raw element is stealing early N in the process of breaking down, but it seems like the amount used should be too small to have that much impact that quickly.

Extra Compost I added a bigger percentage of compost to the mix this round but it's the same batch from last time, just 6 weeks more mature. The plants loved it last round so that shouldn't be it either.

No Perlite I replaced the perlite portion with the extra compost and substituted worms to hopefully aerate the mix. This is my guess as to the issue. Maybe the mix is too dense for atmospheric N to penetrate, and the worms haven't tunneled around enough. Also, I haven't yet added my top dressing of more castings, malted barley powder and compost, so the worms have no incentive to rise to the soil surface. Could it also be the microbes haven't gotten their shit together to hook up with the roots yet and deliver what the plants want? I did add myco at potting.

I know when building a compost pile the suggestion is to not go wider than about 3' since air will penatrate about 2' from each side. My pots are obviously smaller than that, although they are plastic sided, but they're only at most 9" tall so I would think air should be able to get in fine.

I haven't done anything else differently to the plants, and haven't even watered them yet as I make the mix moist when I pot them.

I'm not too worried about it, it just surprised me that the issue started so quickly. I am going to shift much of my comfrey crumble over from my worm bin to top dressing the plants weekly though I'll have to ration it as my comfrey planting is in its early stages and my harvest there wasn't as much as I'd like to have to spread it around, but hopefully by next season I'll have a surplus.

So, what are your thoughts on the early N issue? And hopefully no one will tell @keffja as he'll probably say I would already know the answer if I only changed one thing at a time.

I would guess its from the compost. If it's got unfinished carbon in it then it will hog nitrogen. Or it's too wet and your actually seeing starvation and not nitrogen.