Gee64
Well-Known Member
High brix is really just some tweaks to the soil. Some extra calcium and phosphorus mostly. Then just don't overwater or the air in the soil will get choked off.Yes, I hear you. There's a lot of new information I'm taking in right now, with the comparison grow, and with the other 3 plants I have in SIPs, 2 of which are in veg. And @Gee64 recently turning me on to brix. I feeling like my SIP design could work very well starting in the springtime (March?) when the overhead sun returns, and I clean my greenhouse roofs. The Hawaii sun is quite intense. And then I also need to be on top of early feeding in veg, which I totally failed to do with the comparison grow. I kinda blew it with that because this is a bad time of year to expect good results in any kind of container. Another thing I'm thinking about now is, what the heck should I do at this time of year, and for that I'm thinking of other strains/phenos that are strongly fungus/mold resistant. Even though HI-BISCUS showed a very good springtime result for zero bud rot, it does rather suck for leaf mold. I'm rambling now, but my CBD #18 currently in veg, and still in a 1 gal pot, is looking absolutely fantastic and needs to be transferred to a SIP. She's a compact plant that produces a lot of resin and terps. As for brix, I can't do much about brix with the lack of sunlight at this time of year, so then I need to rely more on natural fugus/mold resistance in this case. In the spring/summer it's a whole different story.
In general, I'm still on the path to try out the new strains/phenos on my list for high bud rot resistance... Northern Lights #5 and the others. I'm feeling like it will take two or three more years to arrive at what I'm looking for, and have strains/phenos for different times of the year. It also crossed my mind to try another comparison of two identical clones, one flowered in my flower house, and the other flowered outside the greenhouse in direct sun. The increased brix could offset any negatives from the plant getting too wet from the rain. I have a friend who grew a Skywalker outdoors recently and he didn't have any fungal problems. My veg house makes sense, because I use night interruption lighting, but the flower house doesn't need lighting. It's only purpose is to protect the plants from too much rain.
You add a bit extra P when you mix the soil, and a sack of prilled dolomite from a farm store will brew you up all the calmag you could ever need. A refractometer will tell you when to use calcium.
So if you make all your soil capable of high brix, then if there's enough light to drive photosynthesis properly the brix just happens.
The only real other thing is the myco needs to stay really healthy too, so a watering with some fish hydrolosate every 10 days or so is needed for that.
So it's not hard. It's surprisingly easy actually if you plan it ahead so you can mix your soil just a bit differently.
To be honest I'm perplexed as to why it isn't the norm for all LOS growers.
I think somewhere along the lines it got commercialized, and to be a good business model it needs to appear magical and complex. It's not.
If you read up on it, sooner or later someone will mention foliars. Those aren't the people you want to follow. Those are the guys who got hooked by the commercialization. You get higher brix easier when it comes from the soil. Foliars are a hack.
Plus being able to get rid of bug spray only to replace it with feed sprays doesn't really make a lot of sense.
Have you looked into beauveria bassiana. It's similar to myco, and compliments myco, and is touted as a fungal suppressor.
@StoneOtter uses it. Maybe he can weigh in here. It may really help you out in the moldy season. It's a soil additive or a spray, but the spray harms bees.
When does your season become less fungally dangerous?