Re: Conradino23's Another Outdoor Grow With High Brix Soil - Air-Pots & SoCal Seed St
Back from a 4th of July vacation .... catching up on this thread. Amazing photos Conrad.
Some points about your comments about SuperSoil. Amusing that SMG bought it up, but I got started on growing orchids from one of Rod McClellan's top orchid growers in South San Francisco. He left McClellans and started his own orchid company in Monterey County. He taught me how to grow and propagate orchids and how to make my own bark mediums for growing terrestrial orchids, which I grew thousands (cymbidium orchids) in the 1980s and 1990s in central and southern California. Like with weed, I wound up with heirloom strains that were on the verge of extinction. I propagated the crap out of them and sold them as a side income. At any rate, Rod McClellan was the one that came up with SuperSoil. Originally it was designed for orchids, but we found it to be way too dense for orchids, even terrestrial orchids. So we developed out own soil media from a variety of sources. He focused on walnut shells, and I based my media on fine fir bark. McClellan went on to sell bagged SuperSoil for all plants, and not just orchids.
From there I went on to make my own soils for all my other potted plants, and later all my other nursery stock. I have had several orchid nurseries in California, and in Oregon I have had several bamboo nurseries. In Southern Oregon I also had a native plant and vineyard nursery with select Dijon grape clones, as well as 50 types of berries and 75 types of heirloom garlics. At this point I am selling off the last of my bamboo collection, as I am getting older and I am less interested in dealing with retail sales, mites, voles, and wrestling with timber bamboos. I am also looking at making this place into a licensed commercial micro grow Cannabis farm. The issues are complicated, but they have eased up on some of the requirements lately. Again, I would specialize in heirlooms. A microgrow I canopy size is 2500 sq ft. The license fee for that is a grand a year, but of course it would cost far more for a large greenhouse, fans, fencing, security, video surveillance, cameras, a safe (its still a cash-only business here), and long list of other requirements. Oh, and large pots and soil, and lights for my cloning room. I have good silty loam top soil here to start with. Finding clones is another issue too. I have had a hard time finding the ones that I would want to grow.
Yeah bamboo is big here too it grows wild. I saw plants around that reached 15-18' easily. I just checked and the common variety here is phyllostachys aurea, which grows even on our land. It's used to support tomatoes and sometimes string beans. It's a strong and nice-looking plant too and I've been using it for biochar frequently. I actually have to go and cut them soon cause our tomato plot is about to burst
As far as Super Soil is concerned it's not really good for weed if you're after genuine quality. But it's possible to grow crazy big plants with that kind of soil with reasonable smelling/tasting buds if you're rolling on the low end of it. But if you go like 3 kinds of guano, 5 different types of volcanic or mined rock powder, every blood and bone meal there is, then this plant will lose a lot of its potential both in smell/taste and high department.
Cannabis has been growing in relatively poor soils for ages before it was brought around...nobody even knows when we started separating drug from textile cultivars and creating optimal confitions. All genotypes and chemotypes might've been growing together sharing similar environment.
I imagine that when they started spreading and were domesticated nitrogen boosted growth was quickly noted while the seeds were sprouting in manure, food scraps and bonefire ashes or wherever in fertile lands they got carried on by the traders. This cannot be lost on the grower.
Clarke actually touches the subject here:
"This situation, however, is changing. Work by Vavilov (1987) has shed light on how Cannabis may have been originally domesticated. It is well known that Cannabis requires soil with a high nutrient content, either artificially fertilized or naturally occurring. By working with wild hemp growing in Mongolia, Vavilov imitated the process of selection and domestication of hemp as it may well have occurred 6500 years ago.
Vavilov postulated four stages in the domestication of Cannabis: (1) existence of plants entirely in their wild state, (2) initial colonization of the wild plant on nutrient-rich dump heaps, (3) utilization of the weed by local inhabitants, and (4) intentional cultivation (Vavilov 1992). Unlike oats and rye, which required an intentional effort to locate and utilize, hemp was very likely only circumstantially domesticated. Domestication probably occurred independently in several centers in northeast Asia around six millennia ago (Vavilov 1987, Schultes 1970, Li 1973 and 1974)."
Physical evidence for the antiquity of Cannabis sativa L.
Good text I recommend it
One thing's changed, now we know for sure it was domesticated at least 12 thousand years ago, which means it's one of the oldest crops humanity has kept on. Also landraces usually don't need high nutrient levels, moderate at best. Afghani grows in harsh and arid climate in very depleted mountain soil. Hmm I even found an official soil analysis. Looks pretty much like High Brix
This is actually good guide for indica growing brothers
https://afghanag.ucdavis.edu/natural-resource-management/soil-topics
Malawi Gold gets nothing but wood ash and grows in cleared jungle plots. Neapalese strains grow high in the mountains where only the strongest plants survive. They often get quite deficient. We spoiled this plant a lot down the road to be honest.
Yeah obviously she'll take the nutes! Well who wouldn't eat all these cookies and ice cream? But we'll pay for it by losing all distinctive features of the produce. There's a lot to be researched here... maybe with your stock you should get a landrace nursery running... there's not a lot of competition around.
People are already coming back to the roots, cause it's inevitable. Everything starts to smell and look and smoke the same, so golden era treats might end up on the top once again even in crosses and hybrids. Imagine recreating Skunk #1 from landrace stock or developing an alternatives for different climates/clients/markets
Hmm this AU hash got me really stoned
