The Gee Spot - You Finally Found It

[Gee64]

Ok, ok! Pics as requested.
1st is family portrait

2nd is Iklwa, she is just starting to take off and is getting good sun now. Beautiful skinny sativa leaves

3rd is Wild Lady. Gets the least amount of sun and is off to a slow start but should be hitting her stride soon.

The rest of the ladies in the metal tub starting in smallest order are Apple fritter, Chocobang and OG kush. Lots of interest in the TMSC plants, excited to see how they turn out

Nice G! They look great. You spoiled SoCal folks. We just had a nasty hail storm. I just got my tomatoes inside in the nick of time. I can't wait to see those Gals in September. Thanks for the update

 

[Gee64]

My question was more can excess water short circuit calcium's ability to fluff the soil? In other words do the microbes need to break it down to have its effect or is it more of a reaction totally independent of microbes?

Because I should have adequate global calcium. But maybe the calcium is fluffing the soil, but the excess water is filling the voids so we really can't tell.

Calcium fluffs the soil without microbes. Water will then rush into the air space.

Then as the water recedes microbes will move in. Thats how they remediate compacted soil actually.

They start with a liquid calcium solution applied in low dose layers to slowly penetrate down without electrifrying the soil. With calcium many low dose applications are better than 1 high dose.

For any of you reading this and wondering.... the quickest way to fry a plant is to overdose calcium. It kills the plant and the microbes. They get electrocuted on a cellular level.

It's a big problem in lots of agricultural areas farmed irresponsibly with synthetics. Giant tractors with tanks of calmag applying tons of calcium all year long, then in the off season the soil is like dust and the wind blows it away.

 

[Gee64]

I checked the new pot this morning and am getting the moisture gradient I was hoping to see, and a max reading of about 9 at the false floor so the footer seems to be doing its job, with 6's and 7's scattered about.

Interestingly, there are drier and wetter pockets which surprised me since the wet mix was thoroughly mixed well by hand so it should be consistently wet/moist at various levels, at least only one day in.

It is interesting isn't it. Thats why I wanted you to poke in at least 5 spots.

If you mix your soil longer before potting, it will be more homogenous. Carbon holds water. 4 times it's weight aproximately, so if your carbon inputs, coco, bark mulch, straw, whatever it is you use, isn't mixed evenly, dry and wet spots arise.

Then roots will chase the water and shield out the dry spots. If the dy spots are 25% of your pot, 25% will never get eaten. So a 2gal pot becomes a 1.5gal pot.

This is why I root drench. It ensures even moisture, which ensures even calcium, which ensures even energy in the soil.

No electricity means no microbes. No microbes means no poop. No poop means no roots. Less roots means less uptake. Less uptake means less photosynthesis or a bigger chance of deficiency.

Either way it means less photosynthesis and then brix gets harder.

It all starts with even carbon properly watered and the right amount of calcium and magnesium in ratio to set the charge.

Water moves the calcium throughout, and carbon absorbs it in place to allow it to be used instead of falling out the bottom.

That even, calcium rich water in the carbon is available to set the charge on the colloid platters because humates, which ARE carbon, ARE the platters.

So the short version is that each platter has its own reservoir to stabilize it's charge.

So now here is a tip. The denser the carbon the more water it holds. Wood holds more than coco, coco holds more than newspaper. All carbons have different values. So to process nitrogen, water is required in large amounts. Too much nitrogen will lower brix. So your carbon density is very important in brix as too much water leads to low brix. Coco is the perfect density. Without even trying my mixes that use coco all shoot straight to high brix.

Brix is about 5 things. Carbon, oxygen, phosphorus, calcium, and aerobic microbes.

So properly dense carbon controls water. Proper calcium builds tilth. Tilth allows air in. That is condusive to good microbial health because they are air breathers, and good microbes mine phosphorus.

It all starts with proper carbon controlling moisture to homogenize the calcium. Carbon is the base key here. Organics means "of carbon base". It's all tied together and balance is key.

Keff knows this too and it's good to get extra perspectives on it, so now that you know how it all ties together, listen closer to what Keff is saying. He has a lot of good stuff he shares.

 

[Gee64]

And just so you all know, Keff and I PM all the time, but Keff likes to do plant journals, so if you don't want to plug up his journal with side-tracking questions, but you want to discuss stuff with him, feel free to call him in here. More perspectives lead to clarity.

 

[Jon]

Hey Jon.
First I have a question for you. Who won the grow-off?

Ok there are multiple things that could occur here.

One thing is that the crap ingredients may never collectively create a mix that comes into a friendly PH zone. You for the most part need calcium to be a buffer so if the crap mix has adequate calcium it becomes far less crappy.

Another is that whatever the mix is, it requires microbes and fungii to break it down. Plants don't eat ammendments, microbes do (composting), and the plants eat the microbe poo, so if it isn't a good enough mix to create nutritious poo then the plants don't get nutritious food.

Carbs and proteins - humans need approximately 2 carbs to every 1 protein. So do plants. In plants these are called browns and greens.

So to compost you need lots of carbon (browns) compared to your meals (greens) to end up with a mix that will cook properly.

Then there is minerals. You need them for cellular function.

So if you have adequate calcium the electrical charge in the soil becomes conduscive to good microbial life, as calcium is a strong electrolyte and microbes run on electricity. The carbon they eat leaves it's shell of the carbon molecule behind which forms humus aka humate. It's like a microscopic piece of perlite in shape. It has a massive surface area for its size. And it's pure carbon so it conducts electricity.

When calcium is correct the magnetic charge in that piece of humus (think static electricity here) attracts things. It attracts cations. So lets say it has room to hold 100 cations. If about 70 are calcium, and about 20 are magnesium, the static charge remaining in that humate will pull in other cations.

Ammonium, calcium, magnesium, potassium,sodium, aluminum and hydrogen are your cations.

So now we only have 10 spots left.

Cations are positively charged so every time the humate attracts another the charge becomes more positive on it's way to neutral. At pure neutral it will fall apart.

So a few potassium jump on, some ammonium and a sodium. Now lets say 3 spots are left. Hydrogen jumps on.

Hydrogen is quirky. It is neutral in charge but has the ability to flip from slightly negative to slightly positive any time it wants.

So when the humate is full, all the pieces should be stuck to it but hovering slightly just as 2 magnets will either stick together, or when reversed they will repel.

So if Calcium and magnesium in combination set the base charge of the humate, and a bunch more attract, and they are all stuck by magnetism, lockout has occurred, but if hydrogen hops onto the last few spots and flip-flops it's charge just right, they hover, but don't fall off, and the plant can easily pull them off as needed.

When 1 gets pulled off the charge of the particle changes and another gets pulled on by magnetism.

This is called CEC. Cation exchange capacity.

The hydrogen that regulates and fine tunes the charge IS your PH.

So if the crappy soil never has enough to create this system, you end up with a very low CEC or more to the point, unbalanced and too much hydrogen jumps on giving you a low PH and lockout occurs. So theres that.

Then there is microbe/fungii health. If the crappy soil can't fulfill a healthy diet, and the soil isn't healthily charged with the right amount of electricity, microbes become unhealthy from the poor diet and sluggish from low electricity. Less poop and poor quality.

Crappy soil isn't really crappy, it's unbalanced.

So if you build a balanced soil as far as carbs and proteins are concerned, to properly compost, add the correct amount of calcium and magnesium to fix the CEC platters, and have the correct minerals to flow across the platters (platters=humates, humus), You are off and running.

The carbs and proteins now become vital. They bring in all the minerals and nutrition and such, so crappy carbs and proteins break down into crappy unbalanced soil, and quality carbs and proteins break down into healthy balanced soil ingredients.

That creates the food.

Now if you take some foodless compacted dirt, add some calcium and magnesium to it, it will fluff up by electricicty. That is tilth.

Soil particles are like plates stacked in the cupboard. When stacked, 12 plates may be 12" tall. When calcium/magnesium are correct, the magnetic charge gets just right and like magnets turned over that repel from each other, every 2nd plate will stand on edge. Those 12 plates are now 12 feet tall. All that space created by every second plate standing on edge is tilth. Air and water and microbiology move in it like hallways in a skyscraper. This is called soil conditioning.

So you need soil that supplies good food to run a proper CEC, and provide conditioning to create tilth. Then you add organic matter to be eaten so as the CEC moves supplies to the plant it can be replaced.

So the end result is if crappy soil has some nutrition in it but isn't conditioned to form hallways and a healthy CEC, you get compacted airless soil and lockout, and that limited nutrition can't be properly attached to an oxygen molecule to be recognized as food, and your cations are locked to the platters. Even if there is some food in the crappy soil it is unrecognizable as it isn't attached to oxygen, or it's locked out.

So thats how nutrition works, and how hydrogen effects PH. You need both to be correct. It all runs on electricity, which also conditions the soil.

Nobody will ever accuse you of giving incomplete answers @Gee64! Thanks so much for taking the time and for that primer. I’m way behind you guys on basic chemistry as I never focused on that in any of my studies. As I see you and Azi talk it’s clear I’m at a disadvantage. But “basic primer” type stuff like this, dumbed down just enough for me to pretty much understand it, helps immensely. I’m printing this one out for my printed files. Your soil mix is also in that file. Lmao!!!

 

[Jon]

The root drenching concept and reason for it would seem to apply to the Cali SS “semi-organic” thing I’m doing til I can make soil, yes? Why wouldn’t it hold true for that? Same thing just a company made the mix for me. Still functioning the same as true organics in this regard yes?

 

[Gee64]

Nobody will ever accuse you of giving incomplete answers @Gee64! Thanks so much for taking the time and for that primer. I’m way behind you guys on basic chemistry as I never focused on that in any of my studies. As I see you and Azi talk it’s clear I’m at a disadvantage. But “basic primer” type stuff like this, dumbed down just enough for me to pretty much understand it, helps immensely. I’m printing this one out for my printed files. Your soil mix is also in that file. Lmao!!!

Nice Jon. You are welcome.

It doesn't have to be complicated. Follow the recipe and water correctly and you can trust in it.

Azi is trying to accomplish a very specific end game so he needs to know how all the pieces work.

All you folks don't need to know all this, the recipe is balanced so don't add extras, don't leave things out, and water correctly.

Don't forget to mix calciums into the dirt 1st, then the rest, and let it cook for at least a month. 6 weeks is better.

Then go grow some beautiful tasty large yielding bug free weed. Do that a few times and then if you want to know all the details it will be easier to learn. If you never crave the details, the recipe, or any reputable recipe, will work just fine.

I like Rev's recycled soil recipe from his 2nd book, as it's the best high brix recipe I have found that has no exotic ingredients in it.

 

[Gee64]

The root drenching concept and reason for it would seem to apply to the Cali SS “semi-organic” thing I’m doing til I can make soil, yes? Why wouldn’t it hold true for that? Same thing just a company made the mix for me. Still functioning the same as true organics in this regard yes?

Yeah for sure. Really all you are doing is mixing water and calcium evenly and letting it soak into your carbon to properly run your cations. If there is carbon in your mix it needs to be evenly hydrated. A root drench every now and then resets it. Not a flush. Do it gently. I use cloth pots so I dunk them gently into a tub of water and let them absorb and sink, then lift them out slowly to drip out. You don't want to flush things out, just hydrate the carbon.

 

[Gee64]

So while we are on these topics, here is what soil and plants actually are.

Soil:
25% Water
25% Air
45% Minerals
5% Organic matter

Dry plant matter:
47% Carbon
43% Oxygen
4% Hydrogen
3% Nitrogen
3% minerals

 

[Gee64]

The carbon in the plant comes from CO2 in the air, not the soil. Don't confuse the 2. Microbes do mix soil carbon and air to ingest, and breath out CO2, but plants don't directly eat soil carbon.

 

[Gee64]

The root drenching concept and reason for it would seem to apply to the Cali SS “semi-organic” thing I’m doing til I can make soil, yes? Why wouldn’t it hold true for that? Same thing just a company made the mix for me. Still functioning the same as true organics in this regard yes?

And yes, it holds true for you.

 

[Jon]

Nice Jon. You are welcome.

It doesn't have to be complicated. Follow the recipe and water correctly and you can trust in it.

Azi is trying to accomplish a very specific end game so he needs to know how all the pieces work.

All you folks don't need to know all this, the recipe is balanced so don't add extras, don't leave things out, and water correctly.

Don't forget to mix calciums into the dirt 1st, then the rest, and let it cook for at least a month. 6 weeks is better.

Then go grow some beautiful tasty large yielding bug free weed. Do that a few times and then if you want to know all the details it will be easier to learn. If you never crave the details, the recipe, or any reputable recipe, will work just fine.

I like Rev's recycled soil recipe from his 2nd book, as it's the best high brix recipe I have found that has no exotic ingredients in it.

Thanks and I hear you. But I could’ve grabbed my Yoda’s mix and just used it without understanding if that’s what I wanted. If I’m in I’m gonna be in all the way. I just have life impedes in my way at the moment. But the borrowing a recipe and not knowing the why is not the long term plan.

 

[Gee64]

Thats exactly what I said, and 5 years later i came to the conclusion the Rev's recipe is the best. I'm not saying you shouldn't take a journey, I highly endorse that. Just start with Rev's and your Buddy's, compare it to your Buddy's and branch out from there. Rev's is easy because you can go to any garden center and buy all the ingredients.

 

[Jon]

Thats exactly what I said, and 5 years later i came to the conclusion the Rev's recipe is the best. I'm not saying you shouldn't take a journey, I highly endorse that. Just start with Rev's and your Buddy's, compare it to your Buddy's and branch out from there. Rev's is easy because you can go to any garden center and buy all the ingredients.

Ok that sounds like wise advice. It’s just that for me to learn this deeply, I need to be settled and ready to focus for many moons. That’s a few months away yet. And then months from using my first batch. I think I can grasp enough to satisfy me for then in the time that first “fill in semi organic” happens. That’s four long months anyway. Lol. After that I’m using true organic soil. Or way closer to true. I suppose it’s not officially “truly organic “ unless I used mulch I made as my base instead of FFOF. Lol.

 

[Jon]

Thats exactly what I said, and 5 years later i came to the conclusion the Rev's recipe is the best. I'm not saying you shouldn't take a journey, I highly endorse that. Just start with Rev's and your Buddy's, compare it to your Buddy's and branch out from there. Rev's is easy because you can go to any garden center and buy all the ingredients.

Yoda’s and yours are pretty damn note for note. A couple differences. I’m sure he learned form the Rev as well. He brags that he’s had his soil for years and it can’t be valued in dollars, to him it’s priceless.

 

[Jon]

Yoda’s and yours are pretty damn note for note. A couple differences. I’m sure he learned form the Rev as well. He brags that he’s had his soil for years and it can’t be valued in dollars, to him it’s priceless.

I asked him to send me a fifty pound bag of it.

I’m his best friend. Nope. Not enough. I had to pry the recipe from his fingers and he still won’t give me the proportions. Lmao! But I get it. He’s licensed in Oregon. Competition is fierce. All those guys consider their stuff proprietary. Lol!

 

[Carmen Ray]

Yeah for sure. Really all you are doing is mixing water and calcium evenly and letting it soak into your carbon to properly run your cations. If there is carbon in your mix it needs to be evenly hydrated. A root drench every now and then resets it. Not a flush. Do it gently. I use cloth pots so I dunk them gently into a tub of water and let them absorb and sink, then lift them out slowly to drip out. You don't want to flush things out, just hydrate the carbon.

Gee the few times that you have suggested I do a root soak it has been when I already have deficiencies and I've resisted because I had considered it traumatic for the plant or had already done a flush or whatever. I am beginning to see the merit now of root soaks as you perform them. I'm having difficulty finding hydrolyzed fish stuff here. Please will you take a look at this product and tell me if it is properly processed fish stuff to use for this purpose.

Please could you give me instructions for a root soak and tell me when and how often you encourage the practice.

 

[Gee64]

I asked him to send me a fifty pound bag of it.

I’m his best friend. Nope. Not enough. I had to pry the recipe from his fingers and he still won’t give me the proportions. Lmao! But I get it. He’s licensed in Oregon. Competition is fierce. All those guys consider their stuff proprietary. Lol!

Yeah don't take it personally if he is tight with his mix. He has a lot of skin in a game that is a brutally competetive way to make a living. The market is flooded and very fickle, so having an edge on the competition is your only lifeline to survival. His soil is worth way more than any given crop.

All you need is a list of ingredients and then knowledge of a healthy human diet. Plants require the same balanced diet that humans do. It's almost as if we were meant to eat plants.

So with his ingredients you need to seperate them into carbs, proteins, minerals, and conditioners.

Carbs are carbons. Browns. After being consumed by the microbes what is left is humus, or humate, which is very similar to a clay colloid. It's a carbon platter that your CEC runs on. Commercially it gets tagged quite often as "an ancient forest product". So like humans, or composting, 2 parts browns to 1 part greens. The exact ratio is a constant debate but you only need to be in the ball park.

Proteins are greens. AKA meals. They are your aminos.

pro·tein
noun
1.
any of a class of nitrogenous organic compounds that have large molecules composed of one or more long chains of amino acids and are an essential part of all living organisms, especially as structural components of body tissues such as muscle, hair, etc., and as enzymes and antibodies.

They are the building blocks of everything.

Minerals.
Minerals are vitamins. The word vitamin is a commercial contraction of "Vital Minerals"

Vital being the important part. You can't live without them. They are catalysts for every process in our body or in a plant that converts or creates things. Photosynthesis being the big one.

And conditioners, so calcium, magnesium, carbon, water. Things that build the structure of the soil.

Then there is the process. Carbs are fuels for cells.

Aminos are the parts used for assembly.

Catalysts provide the molecular spark to initiate processes that convert or create things, and double as the electrical system for both supplying power or transferring signals. Think of them as the electrical wiring. Each mineral is a different colored wire for a different process.

So now you have the plant. Its a giant mega factory that house untolled amounts of sub-factories. Each cell is a sub-factory with a specific purpose.

Carbs power the cells, aminos are the lego blocks things get built with from the cells, minerals catalyse processes that convert all the above into things needed but not supplied by nature, DNA is a list of all possible things that these processes are allowed to create, and RNA is the instructions of how to make these things.

Calcium in the plant is the electrical system that the instructions get carried thru. It's also a structural thing just as bones are to us. So the plants bones carry the electrical signals in a sense, as do the cells bones, right to the control panels on every cell so instructions can be implemented to produce what is needed.

Conditioners prepare the soil, it's physical structure, its electrical structure, and it's liquid transport structure, as well as ventilation. Basically it's the building the microbes/fungii live in.

It's way more complex than that, but in a nutshell that's what is going on.

So you need to supply carbs, proteins, minerals, and conditioners.

What is in the carbs and proteins is vital. The microbes comsume it and turn it into fertilizer for the plant to eat. They are the cooks in the kitchen. Poor ingredients make food akin to McDonalds, good ingredients make food like Grandma does.

So when you balance your inputs, the balance and whats in each part are equally important, but as long as balance of browns and greens is in the ballpark, and all nutritional bases for both plants and microbes/fungii are covered, and you have adequate minerals to ensure catalytic function, your food is good. Any recipe that covers this will work. That creates soil.

Then you condition your soil so air, water, and electricity are available in needed safe amounts, and plant your seed.

So look at his ingredients, break them down so you know what they supply, and combine them in balance, just like you were making yourself the healthiest meal possible.

Too much carbon retains too much water and too much aminos sit around as unprocessed greens. Whet fresh carbon is introduced, they will start hot composting, so exudates which are carbon cat reignite the leftover greens in the soil and hot compost on the roots.

Balance is key so that when cooking is finished, it's actually finished. At that point all the microbes need to do is eat what was cooked and poop it out for the plants.

So divvy his recipe up, catagorize it, then look at mineral balance from your browns and greens and top up what isn't there with rock dusts, condition and buffer the soil, and you are good to go.

 

[Gee64]

Gee the few times that you have suggested I do a root soak it has been when I already have deficiencies and I've resisted because I had considered it traumatic for the plant or had already done a flush or whatever. I am beginning to see the merit now of root soaks as you perform them. I'm having difficulty finding hydrolyzed fish stuff here. Please will you take a look at this product and tell me if it is properly processed fish stuff to use for this purpose.

Please could you give me instructions for a root soak and tell me when and how often you encourage the practice.

Flushes remove things, root soaks homogenize things. The difference is the violence in which you apply the water.

Fish hydrolosate is fish that has been soaked in water until it breaks down into base components, so carbs, aminos, minerals, etc.

Fish emulsion is fish hydrolosate that has had some or most of the above mentioned removed, usually for health products such as fish oils or vitamins, and now whats left won't reblend. It seperates in the bottle and all the shaking in the world won't mix it in a manner that won't quickly unseperate. Its the crap left after the good stuff has been skimmed off, so they add an emulsifier, which is any compound that binds the crap back together. Hydrolosate, AKA hydrolyzed, is held together by Mother Natures keen eye for balance so it doesn't need an emulsifier.

Any product, even if it mentions hydrolysate or hydroltzed, that is classified as an emulsion has been stripped of things so stay away from it.

Hydrolysate is expensive. In Canada fish emulsion is 7 or 8 dollars a gallon. Fish Hydrolysate is 70 dollars a gallon.

That sounds expensive but I use 2ml of it per litre of water, so 1 litre of hydrolysate makes 500 litres of fish fertilizer. It becomes cheap in that context, considering it's very healthy and emulsion is ultra processed food you would buy at McDonalds.

So now reread the Biobizz description and tell me what you think of it.

Here is what I use. See if you can find something similar. Don't trust the Grow Shop guy, he is a dealer.

 

[Carmen Ray]

Gee man, you really know how to explain a concept! Thank you