Plant Alchemy With KNF: Korean Natural Farming And Jadam

[Azimuth]

SIP Fertigation

Now that the SIP's are able to drain the water I give them on a daily basis, I'm feeling more emboldened to try some of the organic ferts in the reservoir. Up until now it has just been water, either tap or rain. The plants all look good with no obvious deficiencies showing so this seems like a good time to try it.

The veg plants got a combination of Horsetail Fern JLF at 1:30 and WCA (Water Soluble Calcium) at 1:750, and the flowering plants got WCA and my Dandelion Flower FPJ from last year, both at 1:750.

The WCA and Dandelion FPJ's are both KNF products and those are recommended to be used at 1:1000 so I'm a little heavy there, and the HTF JLF is a Jadam water ferment and those are recommended to be used at 1:30 so I'm full throttle on that one.

The HTF JLF had some larger particles in it that I probably should have filtered out since they will now sit in the reservoir as an organic product. Next time I will.

And, now that my comfrey plant has re-emerged, I can be a bit more free in using up what I had in inventory from last year as I know I'll be able to replace it. Comfrey's very high in NPK and pretty low in most everything else, and the HTF is high in most everything else so they compliment each other well. S. Nettle is actually the best complement to comfrey, but my patch is just getting established so I don't have much to work with there.

I will say that, so far at least, the combination of my base mix and the crumbles are growing some pretty healthy and happy plants. I'm about six weeks in though so I'll need to be on the lookout for any building deficiencies.

 

[Azimuth]

WCA - Water Soluble Calcium

And, speaking of WCA, here's the How-To Chris Trump video:

 

[Azimuth]

LAB vs RWC

I wanted to make two small containers of comfrey JLF (Jadam Liquid Fertiler) so thought it would be a good opportunity for another experiment.

It seems some people use LAB (Lactic Acid Bacteria, or Lactobacillus) instead of either Leaf Mold Soil or RWC to breakdown plant material. I get that not everyone wants to deal with worms and worm castings, but making a jar of LAB is easy enough for anyone to do so if this works well enough it may provide an alternative for some.

I have two jars, each with 1Tbl of comfrey crumble and 16oz of rain water. One has 1Tbl of LAB and the other 1Tbl of RWC. I want to see how the two compare for breaking down the material. I also want to see how the strength of the roughly 1:30 crumble:water mix compares to that of the fresh comfrey leaf I would have normally used.

I'll let them sit for a few weeks and then reevaluate.

 

[Azimuth]

Importance of silicon in the soil - Build-a-Soil Interview

 

[Azimuth]

Another week in and I'm more and more impressed with the SIP's every day. I'm now at the point where standing water in the reservoir would start to be a problem if it's going to be, but so far no issues. I have been letting the reservoirs use up all the water before adding more, but that will be more difficult to do on the larger containers where I can't see what's going on.

I've kept the SIP with the alternative, cave structure, setup going so I can compare how it grows a plant through a full cycle. So far at least, the top growth looks as good as any of the others. The water roots, however, are concentrated in the small connector cup. There are a few exploring the air gap so it will be interesting to see if they air prune themselves or if they grow long enough to find the reservoir.

Finally, I have a plant started from seed that's not been growing that well in my old mix, so I just took it out of its pot, teased out about half of the old soil mix and repotted it into a SIP with my new soil mix. I've tried to clone it several times without success and have a new round going at the moment.

I figure it will take a week or so to get adjusted, but hopefully between the bottom reservoir and the new potting mix this plant will get a new lease on life. It's a high CBD, low THC plant called ACDC, and I really want to add it to the stable.

I'm seeing signs of tip burn on some plants so I'll cut back a bit on nute concentration levels and see if that helps. Today's nute batch will be featuring the comfrey JLF from last year which I will be using as the primary source of NPK, and see if that is sufficient to grow healthy, happy plants. I'll start with a half strength level on the comfrey and full strength on the WCA, and see what I get for a reaction.

 

[Azimuth]

Since the flowers are generally light and fluffy I'm interested to see what a gallon of fresh flowers dehydrates down to, as that will give me a sense of what I'll need to plan to collect on an annual basis. I did pack them in pretty well as I was collecting them so it's a pretty firm 1 gallon to start.

The answer seems to be it reduces by 85-90%. This 1 gallon batch crumbled down to about 16 oz (16/128=0.125) or 12.5% of the original volume.

I dried them in a tray on my heating mat for a few days and finished them off in my toaster oven at 100*F for about 10 minutes on the air fryer setting as some of the flowers, like the azaleas, were still too light and fluffy to crumble down without that final step.

Next up is to use it as a top dress for flowering plants and see if whatever nutrients the dried flowers contain is sufficient to nourish plants currently in flower.

 

[Azimuth]

Mini Mini-SIP

"How low can you go?"

I've been very impressed with the performance of the SIP's I've created with the 1L containers and today I'm trying something smaller.

I have a couple of stages for my vegging plants, a stage right after rooting where I keep the plants in a limbo mode, and the other a true veg and growth mode to prepare them for flower.

The first stage is done in 9 oz cups with pretty bland soil and low light, and the plants languish there until one gets selected to migrate over into the flower prep stage. At that point it gets up-potted to a 1L container with my GroMix and then trained to keep its shape manageable.

In the 9 oz section I have two clones of the same Blue Kush plant taken at the same time and both in about the same sorry shape so thought it might be a good experiment to see how much the SIP structure by itself matters. Both are in the old, bland soil so very little nutrient value to be had there. So, does the bottom watering set-up by itself produce a materially different plant than my normal, and traditional, wet/dry cycle? Let's find out.

For these 9 oz cups, I used big, chunky perlite in the reservoir, and teased off the bottom section of the roots and soil to accommodate the perlite section, so I'll be able to compare whether a decent plant can be grown on just the liquid feed, or if the GroMix plays as important a role as I think it does to produce a healthy plant.

Everything else will stay the same as far as lighting and other factors. The standard plant will continue to be watered when the pot feels light, and the SIP plant will be watered through the reservoir only. It seems to take 10-14 days for my converted plants to create the roots that find the reservoir after which there is a noticeable improvement in overall health so it will be interesting to see if the same applies here since this plant did not get the GroMix soil upgrade.

I also have two nearly identical clones already in the pre-flower stage, one in each setup, that I will flower together in a couple of weeks to test the SIP structure vs wet/dry all the way through flower. That experiment will start after I harvest my current plant that should be finishing up in the next week or two.

 

[Azimuth]

 

[Azimuth]

Did some top dressing today with my crumbles of comfrey, horsetail fern, and malted barley at a rate of 1 tsp/gal each. This time, rather than roll it all in fresh worm castings I decided to just spread them on top and then sprayed it down with my fertigation water that has a bit of LAB in it. I want to see if the microbes will incorporate it well enough over the next two weeks to be able to skip the extra step of adding the castings as part of the exercise.

Most of the plants look very happy as roots are finding their way into the reservoirs. The ACDC cbd plant continues to struggle but there are some early signs of improvement with some new leaf sites springing up and a couple of new roots beginning to grow. Hopefully it will be like the others and really perk up once the roots reach the rez.

The overall success of these pots has me thinking about making a much larger version to flower in. It will be in a 2 gallon bucket which is about the max size I can go with my setup. But first I want to flower out a pair of 1L containers, one with the normal soil mix, and the other being a SIP. That way I'll be able to compare the two and ensure there are no downstream negatives to this type of setup. That will probably be the standard I use as I find watering these things stupid simple to get right. Wouldn't surprise me to also see an increase in yield but that will actually be of secondary importance to me. Weird, right?

I'll be harvesting my Northern Lights 5 in the next week or two and then I'll tackle that next experiment. That one will also involve some pollen chucking so I'm looking forward to see what I can learn there.

 

[Odjob]

I grow comfrey with garlic. Great stuff! I just pick it and drop it. The trick is not letting it get away.

 

[Azimuth]

I grow comfrey with garlic. Great stuff! I just pick it and drop it. The trick is not letting it get away.

Or letting it go to seed depending on the variety you have.

 

[Odjob]

I don't know much about fermentation techniques or Natural Farming. The itch is there to take a deep dive. I do some old things that are kind of related. The destination is what counts and I'm game for anyway to get there.

 

[Azimuth]

LAB vs RWC

I wanted to make two small containers of comfrey JLF (Jadam Liquid Fertiler) so thought it would be a good opportunity for another experiment.

It seems some people use LAB (Lactic Acid Bacteria, or Lactobacillus) instead of either Leaf Mold Soil or RWC to breakdown plant material. I get that not everyone wants to deal with worms and worm castings, but making a jar of LAB is easy enough for anyone to do so if this works well enough it may provide an alternative for some.

I have two jars, each with 1Tbl of comfrey crumble and 16oz of rain water. One has 1Tbl of LAB and the other 1Tbl of RWC. I want to see how the two compare for breaking down the material. I also want to see how the strength of the roughly 1:30 crumble:water mix compares to that of the fresh comfrey leaf I would have normally used.

I'll let them sit for a few weeks and then reevaluate.

I'm seeing some interesting early results in the LAB vs RWC test, but it's still only a couple of weeks in so I really can't draw any definite conclusions yet. I started each jar with my dry crumble and have shaken both of the jars most every day.

In the LAB jar, the comfrey is still all mostly floating on the surface and still pretty well showing its original structure after a couple of weeks, but with lots of bubbles floating there as well showing the microbes hard at work.

In the RWC container, the comfrey has swollen and "mushified" and mostly sits at the bottom of the container suggesting it is much more advanced in its breakdown.

Frankly I'm a little surprised since the LAB is a facultative anaerobe meaning they can operate in both aerobic and anaerobic conditions, while the worm castings microbes are mostly aerobic and one would think they would degrade rapidly after a couple of weeks underwater.

• Facultative Anaerobe Definition A facultative anaerobe is an organism which can survive in the presence of oxygen, can use oxygen in aerobic respiration, but can also survive without oxygen via fermentation or anaerobic respiration.

I expected the LAB to work at least as fast as the RWC but that does not seem to be the case. My initial conclusion is that while the LAB can indeed operate underwater in an anaerobic environment, they are a singular type of microbe and perhaps not the best at breaking things down.

The RWC microbes, on the other hand, are a pretty diverse bunch and there are both aerobic and anaerobic microbes in the mix. Where there is ample oxygen the aerobic microbes dominate, but once conditions change to anaerobic other types of microbes that thrive in that environment begin to take over and outcompete. And, since they all come from my worm bin, they are mostly all good at breaking stuff down, so when conditions turn anaerobic the process continues with a different group taking the lead.

And I guess that makes sense since the middle to lower portion of my worm bin is pretty wet and mucky, especially in a bin that is mostly broken down so I guess it makes sense that the anaerobic microbes would be well represented.

So, that's my early read on the results, and I continue to be impressed with the capabilities of my Red Worm Castings!

 

[Azimuth]

Today I added another 2 Tbls of comfrey to each of the test jars as I think a 10% crumble to jar capacity is the strength I'm going to go with and the test strength would end up being too weak. Might as well get full strength product at the end of the test. This will extend the experiment some, but I think it will be well worth it.

The two jars smell quite different as well as would be expected. The LAB version smells like a weak vinegar and the RWC is starting to smell like something died, so the fermentation in both jars seems well underway.

 

[Azimuth]

Finally, I have a plant started from seed that's not been growing that well in my old mix, so I just took it out of its pot, teased out about half of the old soil mix and repotted it into a SIP with my new soil mix. I've tried to clone it several times without success and have a new round going at the moment.

I figure it will take a week or so to get adjusted, but hopefully between the bottom reservoir and the new potting mix this plant will get a new lease on life. It's a high CBD, low THC plant called ACDC, and I really want to add it to the stable.

Right on schedule this plant is showing marked improvement which suggests it's at least partly about the soil as the roots are only just now reaching the reservoir after about two weeks but I started seeing better color and new growth about a week ago.

One interesting thing I've noticed is that water droplets form on the inside wall of the container at the transition layer of hydroton clay pebbles which shows some evaporation of water from the reservoir. I assume that carries up to the soil layer providing a hint of moisture to encourage the roots to go exploring.

Whatever it is, this plant seems to like the combination as well. So far every plant I've transitioned over has shown pretty dramatic improvement.

I only have two all soil plants left, both the same strain. One is in flower as part of an experiment to see how a soil only plant compares to the SIP set-up, and the other is a male that's still in veg. I've got a clone of it I'll flower with the other two in the experiment to try to make seeds and then that one will get a personalized, up close tour of the worm farm.

 

[Azimuth]

Mini Mini-SIP

"How low can you go?"

I've been very impressed with the performance of the SIP's I've created with the 1L containers and today I'm trying something smaller.

I have a couple of stages for my vegging plants, a stage right after rooting where I keep the plants in a limbo mode, and the other a true veg and growth mode to prepare them for flower.

The first stage is done in 9 oz cups with pretty bland soil and low light, and the plants languish there until one gets selected to migrate over into the flower prep stage. At that point it gets up-potted to a 1L container with my GroMix and then trained to keep its shape manageable.

In the 9 oz section I have two clones of the same Blue Kush plant taken at the same time and both in about the same sorry shape so thought it might be a good experiment to see how much the SIP structure by itself matters. Both are in the old, bland soil so very little nutrient value to be had there. So, does the bottom watering set-up by itself produce a materially different plant than my normal, and traditional, wet/dry cycle? Let's find out.

For these 9 oz cups, I used big, chunky perlite in the reservoir, and teased off the bottom section of the roots and soil to accommodate the perlite section, so I'll be able to compare whether a decent plant can be grown on just the liquid feed, or if the GroMix plays as important a role as I think it does to produce a healthy plant.

Everything else will stay the same as far as lighting and other factors. The standard plant will continue to be watered when the pot feels light, and the SIP plant will be watered through the reservoir only. It seems to take 10-14 days for my converted plants to create the roots that find the reservoir after which there is a noticeable improvement in overall health so it will be interesting to see if the same applies here since this plant did not get the GroMix soil upgrade.

I also have two nearly identical clones already in the pre-flower stage, one in each setup, that I will flower together in a couple of weeks to test the SIP structure vs wet/dry all the way through flower. That experiment will start after I harvest my current plant that should be finishing up in the next week or two.

So, about 13 days in and the first Mini Mini-SIP roots have found the reservoir so I'd expect to start to see whatever differences will be had in the coming days. I have noticed that it usually takes another week or so for plants to show significant improvement after first reservoir roots, so maybe another week to go. But it has been a pretty consistent 2-3 weeks from start to dramatic improvement.

It's likely at least partly related to the fact that I keep just water in the reservoir initially until the roots drain it the first time and then I start feeding it with my normal fertigation routine, curently comfrey water.

But, this has been successful enough that I'm going to try rooting some cuts in this set-up. So far I have been unsuccessful in rooting my CBD plant so this will be an interesting experiment to see if the SIP structure can help there as much as it seems to in the already rooted plants I've converted.

I'm also going to start a new seed and put it directly into this set-up from the start. Seems like I may be on to something and I'll likely use this set-up until something breaks or it is proven to not be successful over the long term, because the short term results have been consistently remarkable.

 

[ReservoirDog]

I'm seeing some interesting early results in the LAB vs RWC test, but it's still only a couple of weeks in so I really can't draw any definite conclusions yet. I started each jar with my dry crumble and have shaken both of the jars most every day.

In the LAB jar, the comfrey is still all mostly floating on the surface and still pretty well showing its original structure after a couple of weeks, but with lots of bubbles floating there as well showing the microbes hard at work.

In the RWC container, the comfrey has swollen and "mushified" and mostly sits at the bottom of the container suggesting it is much more advanced in its breakdown.

Frankly I'm a little surprised since the LAB is a facultative anaerobe meaning they can operate in both aerobic and anaerobic conditions, while the worm castings microbes are mostly aerobic and one would think they would degrade rapidly after a couple of weeks underwater.

• Facultative Anaerobe Definition A facultative anaerobe is an organism which can survive in the presence of oxygen, can use oxygen in aerobic respiration, but can also survive without oxygen via fermentation or anaerobic respiration.

I expected the LAB to work at least as fast as the RWC but that does not seem to be the case. My initial conclusion is that while the LAB can indeed operate underwater in an anaerobic environment, they are a singular type of microbe and perhaps not the best at breaking things down.

The RWC microbes, on the other hand, are a pretty diverse bunch and there are both aerobic and anaerobic microbes in the mix. Where there is ample oxygen the aerobic microbes dominate, but once conditions change to anaerobic other types of microbes that thrive in that environment begin to take over and outcompete. And, since they all come from my worm bin, they are mostly all good at breaking stuff down, so when conditions turn anaerobic the process continues with a different group taking the lead.

And I guess that makes sense since the middle to lower portion of my worm bin is pretty wet and mucky, especially in a bin that is mostly broken down so I guess it makes sense that the anaerobic microbes would be well represented.

So, that's my early read on the results, and I continue to be impressed with the capabilities of my Red Worm Castings!

Thanks for this Azimuth. I think that the lab microbes don't develop the enzymatic range of the many microbe species contained in your JWF which probably has amylase, cellulase, lipidase, etc. Ultimately what matters I suppose is which finished product our plants prefer. Fascinating stuff, I'm having a lot of fun with the little creepy crawlies myself. I'd be interested, if you have any pH paper or testing equip, to know at the end which one was more acidic.

 

[Azimuth]

Cheers, Dog,

I think that the lab microbes don't develop the enzymatic range of the many microbe species contained in your JWF which probably has amylase, cellulase, lipidase, etc. Ultimately what matters I suppose is which finished product our plants prefer.

Either that or my LAB's a bit old. I'll keep the experiment going for a bit but may redo it when I make a new batch.

I'm going to guess the plants will respond best to the one that's more broken down. Anything still tied up in the comfrey leaf will then have to get further processed by soil microbes.

So far my worm castings are undefeated in my various experiments.

I'd be interested, if you have any pH paper or testing equip, to know at the end which one was more acidic.

I have a meter that I can test them with. Good idea.

 

[Azimuth]

The growth of the SIP plants in veg continues to be impressive, though I have been noticing a bit of a nitrogen ask on the first, and most robust, plant. I've been watering and feeding exclusively through the reservoir and have ramped up the strength of the comfrey mix to no avail. Then I switched over to my fish fertilizer and even that hasn't seemed to solve the problem. I'm having the same issue on my flowering plants to an even greater extent.

And today I noticed some droop on a few of the others even though some of them still had water in their reservoirs. The soil mix is contracting on each of them and pulling away from the pot wall so I guess they are getting dehydrated even though there is ample water below.

My conclusion is that it will probably be best to keep the upper feeder roots engaged with some top watering and maybe I'll just switch over to feeding from the top and water-only in the reservoir. If that is successful it might be a better way to go since it will also keep more organic matter out of the reservoir. I'll try the fix on the flowering plants as well.

 

[Azimuth]

Today I added a few worms to each of my containers. There should be plenty of organic matter in there to keep them happy, munching away and leaving their magical 'unicorn poop' in their wake. Plus they should help keep the mix open and airy as they tunnel around, and also should help bring some of my top dressings down into the mix where the microbes can have at it.

A few worms is all I should need as they will breed and make egg casings which will produce more worms as they hatch, although the final quantity of them is determined by pot size and available food. In that way the population is self regulating.