Cottage 420's Organic Perpetual Indoor Garden

Wow again! Hey, do use eggshell at all; if so, how?
Cheers..
 
Wow again! Hey, do use eggshell at all; if so, how?
Cheers..

We've used egg shells for probably 20 years gardening ... they take a while to break down OR I have to work too hard = bake and put into food processor OR put into vinegar and let sit for a week .... I'm too lazy.

So for straight up calcium I use .... calcium carbonate and/or Calcium Sulfate Dihydrate (Gypsum) and/or Crab Shell Meal

I usually just add those 3 into my soil mix at the beginning building the soil and top dress the crab shell meal as the plants mature. Say a light handful to the top of the pot. Sometimes I mix that with EWC and make a slurry and water in.. and usually once a round add in gypsum in a slurry - say a 2 Tbs. to 4 gal water. The gypsum has sulfur which is a must have for healthy plants. Rock dusts have that but in a slow release form sometimes my plants need a helping hand. I grow in No-Til pots so I'm always amending organic calcium/nitrogen/micro nutrients and of course mycos from ACT.

Usually all I do to kick the ladies up a notch is a kelp and EWC tea with some dried nettles. That right there pretty much fixes any issues and if no issues girls go crazy.

Rad said:
Beautiful pictures ... again

About that heavy duty surge suppressor, is it a UPS with the battery old enough that it is starting to go? My experience with UPS is limited to desktop PC UPS and surge suppressors. The UPS seem to last about 2 years. They also seem to handle power spikes and brownouts better than straight surge suppressors.

Hey there Rad - For surge suppression I use passive devices.. I know a UPS will work for sure but I'm cheap .. I'd have that hooked up to my stereo rig IF I had one! :thumb:

I learned how to do it on the cheap as I build my own electronics - high end stereo tube gear. Had my share of issues very similar to what I was having here with lights. It really gets down to cleaning up the AC in and clamping any spikes. I could of course just hook up a variac and be done with it but I like my variacs about as much as my seed collection. Something like that to be used daily is a band-aid. Best to deal with the AC in and try and clean it and clamp it. For clamping I get a GOOD power strip with filtering AND clamping.. good ones are what I use for audio gear since that equipment is more $$ than an LED light even a really really good LED.

What I should be doing is opening up all the lights I use and add in a XY capacitor across the line - that gets rid of the line noise big time. The power strip (Tripp lite or Furman AC-215) for audio has surge and filter protection.

All the LED lights I have do have an X/Y cap but they are made of ceramic disc and well for reliability AND function I prefer to use Metallized film X1 rated capacitors and those are what I use when building electronics. They will take a surge a big one like lightening unless it hits the house! The issue with noise on the line and how it works with AC/DC (all large high power grow lights are AC to DC)
when noise from SMPS (switch mode power supplies) that are very common in house holds these days create noise and that noise creates issues with some transformers - likely heating them up and then they become unstable causing my power strips to heat up and trip. Getting a spike from a neighbors AC unit is likely my issue.

I tested a filter on one circuit that was tripping - fixed the issue. The other circuit I was also having issues with, I installed a heavy duty pool pump timer that can handle 40amps. That circuit still cut out due to power strip over heating from one of the lamps not liking the noise/surge ... turned off that one lamp problem kinda solved. I have another filter/surge suppressor in hand and will put that into action and turn on the offending lamp to see it that helps.

right now I'm outa the woods with lamp issues. What I really need to do long term is hook up a whole house line noise/surge suppressor, and get a few dedicated 20A circuits just for lighting/fans instead of the 15A I have now. I'm going to try and install one 20A circuit tomorrow for the flower room and quit futzing about with 15A circuits.
 
We've used egg shells for probably 20 years gardening ... they take a while to break down OR I have to work too hard = bake and put into food processor OR put into vinegar and let sit for a week .... I'm too lazy.

So for straight up calcium I use .... calcium carbonate and/or Calcium Sulfate Dihydrate (Gypsum) and/or Crab Shell Meal

I usually just add those 3 into my soil mix at the beginning building the soil and top dress the crab shell meal as the plants mature. Say a light handful to the top of the pot. Sometimes I mix that with EWC and make a slurry and water in.. and usually once a round add in gypsum in a slurry - say a 2 Tbs. to 4 gal water. The gypsum has sulfur which is a must have for healthy plants. Rock dusts have that but in a slow release form sometimes my plants need a helping hand. I grow in No-Til pots so I'm always amending organic calcium/nitrogen/micro nutrients and of course mycos from ACT.

Usually all I do to kick the ladies up a notch is a kelp and EWC tea with some dried nettles. That right there pretty much fixes any issues and if no issues girls go crazy.



Hey there Rad - For surge suppression I use passive devices.. I know a UPS will work for sure but I'm cheap .. I'd have that hooked up to my stereo rig IF I had one! :thumb:

I learned how to do it on the cheap as I build my own electronics - high end stereo tube gear. Had my share of issues very similar to what I was having here with lights. It really gets down to cleaning up the AC in and clamping any spikes. I could of course just hook up a variac and be done with it but I like my variacs about as much as my seed collection. Something like that to be used daily is a band-aid. Best to deal with the AC in and try and clean it and clamp it. For clamping I get a GOOD power strip with filtering AND clamping.. good ones are what I use for audio gear since that equipment is more $$ than an LED light even a really really good LED.

What I should be doing is opening up all the lights I use and add in a XY capacitor across the line - that gets rid of the line noise big time. The power strip (Tripp lite or Furman AC-215) for audio has surge and filter protection.

All the LED lights I have do have an X/Y cap but they are made of ceramic disc and well for reliability AND function I prefer to use Metallized film X1 rated capacitors and those are what I use when building electronics. They will take a surge a big one like lightening unless it hits the house! The issue with noise on the line and how it works with AC/DC (all large high power grow lights are AC to DC)
when noise from SMPS (switch mode power supplies) that are very common in house holds these days create noise and that noise creates issues with some transformers - likely heating them up and then they become unstable causing my power strips to heat up and trip. Getting a spike from a neighbors AC unit is likely my issue.

I tested a filter on one circuit that was tripping - fixed the issue. The other circuit I was also having issues with, I installed a heavy duty pool pump timer that can handle 40amps. That circuit still cut out due to power strip over heating from one of the lamps not liking the noise/surge ... turned off that one lamp problem kinda solved. I have another filter/surge suppressor in hand and will put that into action and turn on the offending lamp to see it that helps.

right now I'm outa the woods with lamp issues. What I really need to do long term is hook up a whole house line noise/surge suppressor, and get a few dedicated 20A circuits just for lighting/fans instead of the 15A I have now. I'm going to try and install one 20A circuit tomorrow for the flower room and quit futzing about with 15A circuits.

I half understand what you are sayng, and understand enough to realize you know a lot more than I do :)

I installed dedicated 20 amp circuits on the theory that two 600 W HPS plus another amp for the fan and such might be pushing up against a 15 amp circuit so why not just go 20 amp. My house is about a block away from a small sub-station/generator for our end of town. I can hear the generator go on and off when there is a high power powerline blackout. I suppose being that close to a sub-station would give us cleaner conditioned power than average.

I took a quick look at that Furman AC-215. That is some serious AC purification equipment. More than I ever expect to need
 
Cheers, BB. I have read a few opinions on the utility of eggshells... I oven bake til dry then crush to powder in mortar and pestle. Is that enough processing? I recently read PeeJay I think on 420 say that they should be BURNT in the oven.. Like, charred. I have read elsewhere that eggshell is useless unless properly composted over 10-20 years or whatever...
Hoping to have my eggshell practices confirmed as correct is possible from another source!
Thanks.
 
Cheers, BB. I have read a few opinions on the utility of eggshells... I oven bake til dry then crush to powder in mortar and pestle. Is that enough processing? I recently read PeeJay I think on 420 say that they should be BURNT in the oven.. Like, charred. I have read elsewhere that eggshell is useless unless properly composted over 10-20 years or whatever...
Hoping to have my eggshell practices confirmed as correct is possible from another source!
Thanks.

Baked and burned... like me on a Saturday night - that works. Also putting them in vinegar, let sit - creates pure Calcium Phophate which is what you want and it will be readily available right away. Yes 20 years is a stretch, more like 3 years but in a compost pile/bin that works. You can also bake them and drink in a tea .. healthy dose of calcium. I'm gonna pass on that tho but my in-laws do it. They grow some serious organic veggies and I mean human head sized cabbages for example.

Here's a link to how to do the baked egg shells and vinegar - be sure to understand the final result gets diluted 20:1 - vinegar is acetic acid and will kill plants. This is how some Japanese gardeners do it and it's extremely worthy.

making water soluble calcium w/ egg shells & vinegar...

Note that this is a treatment for plants/soil right at change over from VEG to FLOWER. This change over time is when I add in a handful of either oyster shell flower or crab shell meal.


AllSmiles said:
Very late but sub'd! Just read a few pages and can't wait to find time to read the rest! I'm just getting off the bottle and this is the path I want to be on. Thanks for sharing! And of course I couldn't resist and skimmed threw the last few pages. I'm speechless!

Thanks very much and welcome to this little corner of my :420: canna world. PLEASE feel free to skip to the end .. and advise/scrutinize/argue/fight/love - its all good.

Thinking of going soil and organics - it's all about the microbes and the soil. I basically do the exact same thing as the bottles but use the micro organisms and the minerals in the soil to get the job done. The end result is the same but the way to get there is different. I basically started organic gardening well before there was any bottles so this is my natural way to grow. I leaned a lot from other canna growers tho to fine tune container gardening which is what we do, be it with salts or soil. Soil is A LOT less $$ and results are pretty easy to achieve. Even I can do it! yay us. You can get better yields with salts and $$, but I feel at the end of the day, organics is both best practice for our environment long term sustainable AND economics. You will see that this path to organically grown meds is/will catch on and become (hopefully) the future. History repeats... organics FTMFW. These methods go back in history pretty far = 10s of thousands of years.

My belief - as we go forward our food chain will suffer and so will the health of the people that rely on this food chain. Our soil is being depleted, the only way out of a downward spiral towards starvation and illness is building better soils. Not depleting them for short term wealth. :Namaste: :passitleft: Aren't you glad you stopped by??

Wow, /rant!

OK update:

Chemdawg the Purple.. this is going to be the star down to chop.. she's hanging on and weather reports are 50s at night and 70s during the day so hey ... more purple in the forecast! Yeee-haw.

Main cola getting a little foxy... hot spell there for a few days in the upper 90s .. ouch. I was having issues with lamps/electricity so I was leery of turning on the AC.

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She's getting darker - the curl from heat stress ... and probably missing a man in her world.

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Main cola

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Way down low nug shot - this is top shelf bud all the way down to the soil line. There's a few buds down where I consider LAF but they are quality too! This is an amazing lady.

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Up close lower nug

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Up close main cola

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Okay moving on...

Mandala Far Out - way way frosty... this one is a keeper! :yummy:

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Far Out close up

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Krystalica .. she's got some pretty hairy legs, ahem ... I'm in love! She's my go to girl.

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Chemdawg the Purple - again..

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Harvest pics of BBD - Blue Berry Dream - she's starting to stink up the neighborhood.

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BBD on the line - I hang my ladies in our bedroom!

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BBD on the line

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Chemdawg the Purple - lower nug shot

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Hey there Brother Bo!

I'm back from my first expedition with the new job. I can honestly say I'm loving it. So glad I didn't miss the Chemdawg chop. BBD is no slouch that's for sure, but that Chemdawg is truly special. Glad you got the electrical all sorted out. You and Rad made my head hurt there for a second lol! I found some NATURAL EWC in the back 40 today so that's being used to brew an AACT right now. I also use Calcium Carbonate for my calcium needs. Cheap and awesome!

That far out from Mandala IS looking awesome too. Glad to be back and getting back into the thick of things!

Do you get your malted barley from buildasoil?
 
Mini update... still hanging in there with Chemdawg the Purple. She's stopped water uptake and starting to loose those beautiful purple fan leaves very slowly. She's still praying to the light ... she never stopped that. I'm still in complete awe with how well this lady grew.

BBD still on the hook, she's finally dry enough to trim. Only took 7 days! I will be trimming her tomorrow and taking bud porn pics she looks superb already. The cure should really seal that up! I think she may actually get some purple on the buds during cure. I was wondering when the Blackberry would show up, I can smell it. She's a little stinker... on a calm day I can smell her down the street.

Growing tip for close to harvest:

Coming down the stretch what I do is give the ladies some:

giberellins/cytokins / silica/ compost tea (x1 in last 3 weeks)/ plain RO water (mostly) / gypsum / calcium carbonate

VVVV The above translates to this VVVV

Coconut water / aloe water / Pro-tekt / compost tea / water / gypsum / calcium carbonate (all organically sourced).

I'm a patient too. It's very important to me that my meds are of the highest quality and that is my goal = highest quality.

Add to that above I usually make an SST - this round was Wheat Berries or wheat grass which is extremely healthy for us humans and the ladies go wild.. to all the above I water that in and add them into my IPM routine.

Spray on, water in; FTMFW. Yeah u right! :cheer: :Namaste:


HSO Chemdawg - purple cultivar just about done. I will take more pics right before harvest.

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Dutch Passion Blueberry Auto - almost done

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Blueberry Auto - these are short but I can get usually a zip dry so they take up very little space I can grow 6-8 of these in a very small space .. so they don't take up valuable space in the flower room. 1 little Reflector 450 LED lamp I can grow say 6 zips of purple..FTW. The purple is the most favored buddage from my friends... green is still MY favorite so far.

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The purple is the most favored buddage from my friends... green is still MY favorite so far.

Funny this, I was just talking to my Mrs about this yesterday. We think 'The purple is cool to look at' but really like the bright green for smoke.
I believe i read the green pheno of the Auto cbg is the better producer, looking forward to finding out!
Much Thanks for the growing tip near harvest:thanks:
 
I hate to admit it, but I'm going to be a bit sad when you chop the purple Chemdawg. That plant is among the finest I've ever seen her on 420. Congrats on pulling her through in beautiful fashion Bo!

Did you get my q on the malted barley? Looks like build a soil carries both corn and barley. Just wondering where you get yours from?
 
I hate to admit it, but I'm going to be a bit sad when you chop the purple Chemdawg. That plant is among the finest I've ever seen her on 420. Congrats on pulling her through in beautiful fashion Bo!

Did you get my q on the malted barley? Looks like build a soil carries both corn and barley. Just wondering where you get yours from?

I'll second that!
 
Malted organic corn I got from:

glutenfreehomebrewing.org

Link to product I use:

Organic Corn Malt

I have a wheat intolerance I didn't know about until I quit wheat for health reasons = NDE - near death experience = that's when I started growing meds! FTMFW. Thanks to my wife for all of this ^^^ and me being here. Yay us!

For organic malted Barley - organic Briess malted barley - this was a tip from Coots - go for the lighter malted barley:

Briess Organic Bonlander Munich Malt : Northern Brewer

Still no chop on the Chemdawg ... she's throwing out a new set of pistols but it was cool/cold nights .. not going to last tho! All cloudy trichomes ...

Smoke report on the BBD:

Reminder.. DON'T smoke freshies ... Woooah. I puffed a small buddlet last night after trim, I was wigged out for almost 20 hrs.. This plant is a Sativa hybrid leaning toward Sativa.. green hornet reared her head after about 5 minutes into puffage. I got agitated, annoyed and other wise completely stoned to bee-jeebers then laughed my ass off for a good .. a while. I'll give another proper smoke report after a proper cure. It's a keeper and strong as hell complete with waking up on the couch with drool after I ate a bag of popcorn AND I had to go to work today. Ouch! Ah well someone had to do it.
 
Malted organic corn I got from:

glutenfreehomebrewing.org

Link to product I use:

Organic Corn Malt

I have a wheat intolerance I didn't know about until I quit wheat for health reasons = NDE - near death experience = that's when I started growing meds! FTMFW. Thanks to my wife for all of this ^^^ and me being here. Yay us!

For organic malted Barley - organic Briess malted barley - this was a tip from Coots - go for the lighter malted barley:

Briess Organic Bonlander Munich Malt : Northern Brewer

Still no chop on the Chemdawg ... she's throwing out a new set of pistols but it was cool/cold nights .. not going to last tho! All cloudy trichomes ...

Smoke report on the BBD:

Reminder.. DON'T smoke freshies ... Woooah. I puffed a small buddlet last night after trim, I was wigged out for almost 20 hrs.. This plant is a Sativa hybrid leaning toward Sativa.. green hornet reared her head after about 5 minutes into puffage. I got agitated, annoyed and other wise completely stoned to bee-jeebers then laughed my ass off for a good .. a while. I'll give another proper smoke report after a proper cure. It's a keeper and strong as hell complete with waking up on the couch with drool after I ate a bag of popcorn AND I had to go to work today. Ouch! Ah well someone had to do it.

I just lol:rofl:'d all over the place. Love it! That's why me and brightlight (Carestaker too) love the fresh weed lol. It packs a punch and usually has a great flavor when vaped. Smoking, not so much (flavor icky). Fresh weed FTMFW!

Thanks so much for all the great info and links brother Bo! Giving it away is the only way we can keep it. I love this forum!!! I'm glad Chemdawg is still rocking. This is a plant among plants! There are so many similarities in Brewing and MMJ. I just gave a friend your IPM foliar recipe for his outdoor hops lol. I bet it will improve things 10x. Take some pics when you harvest Chemdawg. Did you take a clone? Oh I hope so!
 
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