Graytail Explains Doc Bud's HB Kit

Graytail;2383175 said:

Dutty Panty;2383098 said:

I'd recommend discussing this in docs high brix q and a thread. Lots of knowledge there

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Yeah, but it's spread over hundreds of pages.

I'm a bit dismayed listening to the discussion. "Marketing"? Ouch. Heheh, seriously, no one is marketing. Doc Bud is just a guy who went looking for something really simple and universal. His early find was a slow-release chemical fertilizer called Osmocote. It comes in "prills" - tiny balls - which release in water and heat. They had a version called Osmocote Plus that had especially high amounts of calcium which our plants like. I used that method on my first grow and it was great. All I had to do was water, and I turned out some beautiful plants - easy peasy, can't go wrong. Research on the benefits of calcium led Doc to mineralization. And mineralization led to a company of organic horticulturists who did the research to determine exactly what mineral balance was best for the soil biota, and therefore the plant. That's the key - the exact mineral balance for optimum biota populations. For instance, Potassium is bad for the biota even though traditionally, tree leaf mulch has been used in organic gardens. This mineral balance has been proven to be the best. The company tests a soil sample you send them, and then formulates an amendment, if possible, to bring it into balance. Most commercial soils and soilless mediums can't be balanced. Pro-Mix and Sunshine #4 can be.

And then, once you have proper mineral ratios, you've created a "perfect" environment for the biota - happy happy - and you can easily influence them with foliars and drenches. The foliars cause the root exudates to signal the biota. We tell the plant to ask the biota for certain nutrients, either to promote growth or fruiting/rooting. We add a concentrated microbial tea to nurture and restore the biota, and fishy ferts to support nitrogen levels in the plant. There's also a formulated drench - Cationic drench - to release fruiting nutrients locked up in soil ions.

So ... the kit is simply a formulated mineral amendment to tune the soil, with foliars and drenches to supplement and time development. And! it's cheap and foolproof, so I don't need to know anything in order to get great results. I will eventually learn more about what's happening and which factors are causing it, but Doc Bud's whole search was for something that a novice could use to get stellar results.

I've we HBers have made the whole thing sound exclusive and mysterious, that's bad - it's anything BUT that. It's just that it defies so much of what people believe, so we've kinda been off on our own. I doesn't matter a whit to any of us how you get high Brix plants - we just love ours! Sweetsue, your Buddha in particular looks like it reads very high Brix. The leaf vigor and the gorgeous waxy cuticle tell me it's probably at the high end of the range. I'm about the only HBer who takes many Brix readings. That's merely a way of measuring results - doesn't matter how you got there. Brix is just a measurement of plant health. In almost all cases, high Brix correlates with high health, and high health correlates with lotsa juicy trichs. Brix has been used in the winegrape industry for decades to measure sugars. There are probably more complex methods of measuring plant health, but this one is very simple - a refractometer costs $30-40. It takes a couple minutes to measure. No extractions, no expensive equipment.

The kit simply produces high Brix without knowing what you're doing. Oh, and it's really hard to mess it up. Really, it's not special or mysterious - just ... odd.

But I'm envious of what you're doing Sweetsue. Someday, I'll dive into the whole subject and find out what's really happening in the soil. The chemistry gets pretty complicated.

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