Plant Alchemy With KNF: Korean Natural Farming And Jadam

[ReservoirDog]

I didn't post my pics here of SIP planter and and garden etc. as indicated. But, I have just finished my grow tent BUILD-out journal with some entries that show my SIP design and my unusual cardboard box ultra-raised veggie garden. Best thing, to avoid over-posting here, would be to check out the last page of that journal which as of today is now closed. For also today begins the GROW. I have wanted to grow my own laboratory weed indoors since my first toke. Today, it begins! link Let’s Get Nuts: 1100w LED With UV & IR, 5x5x6fr, CO2, Build-Up.

Thanks for the vid Azimuth, and the support everyone.

 

[Azimuth]

Mini SIP

I have a few extra clones kicking around so I thought I'd try something I've wanted to experiment with for a while, SIP's or Sub Irrigated Planters.

Same basic concept as a hempy. I took a clear 1L take out container and made a drainage hole about 1" up from the bottom, added a 1.5" layer of hydroton clay balls, filled the rest of the way with my grow mix, planted a newly rooted Blue Kush clone, and topped with a layer of worm castings covered by ALM.

Since the clay balls are filled to a level above the hole there should be a small separation between the water reservoir and the soil although the clay balls have some wicking capabilities so the roots should find access to ample water without sitting directly in it, unless they want to form water roots.

I'm getting ready to plant the outdoor garden and am planning on making a few of these in 15 gallon buckets for raspberries, blueberries and other things. I've been intrigued with the concept for a while so I figured this will give me a chance to see how they work up close since I can see through the clear (though a bit cloudy) container and better learn how the soil, roots and reservoir work together.

I also want to see if the soil stays too soggy as it sits on a hopefully moist bed of the clay balls. I plan to lightly water the top roots every 3-4 days, and for the bottom roots I'll experiment with only watering from the bottom as well as the more traditional way of dumping the water in from the top. If things get too wet I can always let the soil dry out and then refill the reservoir after sufficient drying time.

I expect it to be at least a week before the roots meander their way down to the reservoir so figured I'd start the clock ticking today.

This morning I saw the first roots tickling the water reservoir in the first SIP so I'm going to start my various experiments to see what's what. The second SIP is about 5 days behind so maybe that one will be ready by the end of the week.

First up is to keep the reservoir constantly filled to see how the plant reacts. Jeremy from BAS says this is not the way to do is since it will keep the organic mix too wet, but my set-up is slightly different since I'm using the Hydroton clay balls as the link between the reservoir and the grow mix rather than more of the same soil mix. So, I'm hoping the clay balls keep the linkage area moist but not too wet, and the plant grows water roots for On-Demand drinking.

Once I see how the constantly filled water reservoir works out I'll begin experimenting with feeding nutrients, either through the grow mix or directly into the reservoir. The challenge with the latter is that mine are organic ferts based on either Jadam or KNF and I don't want the reservoir to turn anaerobic and invite root rot.

But, first things first. I filled the reservoir with rain water, my normal watering source which will give me a chance to see how wet the upper soil mix gets after a day or so and whether or not I start getting droopy leaves, the first sign of an overwatering, or more correctly a lack of oxygen, issue in the medium.

 

[Azimuth]

Ok, about a week or two in on the SIPs and I'm already seeing some interesting things.

On the original, gravel bed SIP, the root growth is pretty robust. As the roots make their way through the soil they are nice and white and thick looking, more so than in the all soil based pots. It's almost like they can sense the reservoir and are morphing into the water root structure they'll adapt.

Maybe it's evaporation from the water pool or perhaps the soil mix in contact with the clay balls is wetter than average, but whatever it is, the roots are definitely different and more robust.

Once they hit the Rez they start branching out quickly into a fish boning structure which I assume means they are pretty happy.

On the other type, the cave with void structure, the roots are not discovering the water Rez quite so easily. This pot is built like those you see on the web, basically two buckets with a wicking pot connecting the two. My wicking pot also has the clay balls.

In this one, the roots found the connecting pot, but rather than head straight down to the pool of water like the other did, instead they started sliding out the side aeration holes. I mean the water is right there, maybe another inch down but instead they went out the side holes into the air gap. Pretty unexpected.

Both plants look quite happy with none of the over-watering droop I was concerned about so that's good.

I did up-pot a couple of additional clones to the gravel structure version to see how other strains react to this setup.

 

[Azimuth]

Azi's Crumble

I've been researching various plants to use in my backyard fertilizer production experiment and have settled on three primary ones to use; Comfrey, Horse Tail Fern, and Stinging Nettle. I'll post up the nutrient profiles in a bit and compare them to both fish (the gold standard) and dandelion (the most typical) to show why.

This year, instead of going the JLF (Jadam Liquid Fertilizer) route I'm going try something different, something I call my Crumble.

Basically it's simply dried leaves, roots and flowers that are broken down into small pieces, but not quite powderized.

I'll use them as a top dress like one would use feather meal, blood meal, or any of the others, and probably apply every two weeks or so.

If this works, and I don't see why it wouldn't, it will solve several of the challenges I have with JLF.

First is the smell. The JLF literally smells like something died. Now, after a while and enough microbes, the smell will morph into more of what I call a "springtime horse barn" smell, but not everyone in my vicinity can appreciate the benefits that come with the liquid that generates that odor. With my crumble, there may be a faint hay smell but you have to be right on top of it to notice.

The second challenge is dosing. I'm thinking I want to start out with probably equal parts of each of the three types, but at the moment I have very different quantities of each.

So, if I add them to a bucket, keeping them all equal will be an unnecessary challenge. But, by drying the three types of plants separately and then reducing each to a Crumble, I can use measuring spoons to more accurately dose them out. I also may find that I want more or less of a specific input at some stage in the plant cycle, and this will more easily accommodate that.

Third is storage. By initially drying and reducing the material it will store long term in a very small footprint. I did this last fall with a dozen or so very large comfrey leaves and they all fit in a smallish canning jar and would likely keep forever as long as I keep moisture out.

Storing the water based and odiferous JLF would take up a lot more room. Plus I figure that one of the real advantages of the water based JLF is that the water is a great carrier to help spread it broadly over a farm. That's a feature I don't need for just a few plants.

Fourth is extractability. Earlier in the thread I showed the difference in the amount of nutrients extracted in both the sugar ferment of KNF and the water based version of Jadam. But in both of those extractions, only a part of the plant was extracted. Now granted it is likely most of what is wanted, but there is still some waste. With the Crumble, all of the input material goes back into the soil in the Great Circle of Life.

One advantage to JLF is that the nutrients are plant available immediately after a brief fermentation period whereas the crumble will need a couple of weeks for soil microbes to break them down, but that is a difference I can easily accommodate.

Plenty of garden sites say that applying comfrey in a "chop and drop" method is a great way to use it, and that's essentially what I'll be doing, except I'll have a shelf stable source available to me year round.

And I can easily convert some to a JLF by using a jar, rather than a bucket, for use in my aquaponics set-up.

So I think the stated advantages will provide a really good alternative to an already very good type of input, but do it in a way that works better for me.

I've already applied my first topdress of the comfrey this week as some of my plants are showing a bit of a nutrient ask so I mixed some dry comfrey crumble with some fresh worm castings and applied them as a topdress and then watered them in.

The Rev, in his book True Living Organics, talks about top dressings needing 10-14 days to show some impact so it will be interesting to see if this idea has merit.

 

[Azimuth]

Flower Crumble

I just put a plant into flower so thought I'd start a flower crumble to help fertilize it. According to Master Cho, the best plants to use to fertilize tomato plants are other tomato plants. So it would stand to reason that the best plants to fertilize canna plants are other canna plants.

That's fine for veg as I'll have strain specific crumbles for each one I'm growing using trimmings from when I propagate or generally thin the plants, but for flower? C'mon, we all know that using canna buds to fertilize flowering canna plants is an idea with little to no chance of happening.

So, I'm doing the next best thing. Today I collected a gallon's worth of flowers from the yard. Since I want big showy canna buds my criteria is anything with either big, showy blossoms or those from the dynamic accumulators.

Today's harvest included flowers from azaleas, daffodils, forsythia, and dandelion. As the season progresses I'll add stuff like daylilies, and hydrangeas, comfrey, stinging nettle, etc. I wonder if the vibrant colors from the flowers will translate into more colorful buds? Hopefully they'll enhance the typical colors I'd normally get.

Since the flowers are generally light and fluffy I'm interested to see what a gallon of fresh flowers dehydrates down to, as that will give me a sense of what I'll need to plan to collect on an annual basis. I did pack them in pretty well as I was collecting them so it's a pretty firm 1 gallon to start.

 

[Azimuth]

Veg Crumble

My GoTo veg crumbles this season are going to be Comfrey, Horsetail Fern and Stinging Nettle.

You can see from the following table that the combination of the three compares quite favorably to that of the gold standard of fish, coming in roughly at about 75% of most of the different inputs. Which is actually fine because I've heard several reports of fish being too potent and burning plants, so a lower level of nutrients might actually be beneficial.

Compared to dandelion, which is many people's default since they are readily available, my combination has higher levels of almost all the nutrients and they are each much easier to harvest in larger quantities.

In the following table I just show some of the major nutrients the plants contain, but there are also small amounts of all of the trace minerals as well, things like Aluminum, Boron, Cobalt, Copper, Manganese, Molybdenum, Nickel, Selenium, and Zinc.

The figures come from the appendices of the book, The Regenerative Growers Guide to Garden Amendments, by Nigel Palmer. Unfortunately there are no figures cited for 'N' which would have been super helpful.

.................................P.............K..........Ca..........Mg..........Fe.........Si...........S.............Cl...........Na.........
Fish (FAA)............836.8......1,013....718.8.......105.7.....2.57.....0.29....127.2......1,000.....109.3.......

Comfrey..............270.8.......1,025....31.52......34.15.....2.06.....15.4......8.32...........80.......0.58......
Horsetail Fern.......42.1.......876.5....358.1......90.92....6.74.....28.8....56.79.........300.......1.11......
S.Nettle...............35.34...........376.......861.........141.....1.57.....24.6.....70.17.....1,050.......0.55.......
....(av)........... ......116.1.......759.2....416.9........88.7.....3.54.....22.9.....45.10.....476.7.......0.70.......

Dandelion......... ....128...........485.......143.......53.4.......3.17.......28........33.5....1,340........3.25.......

The group is also pretty complementary towards each other with low stuff in one balanced out by high stuff in another.

Comfrey is often cited as a great standalone nutrient for garden plants, but you can clearly see from the table that it is nicely high in P and K, but pretty low in everything else.

Horsetail Fern is super high in iron (Fe) but that is buffered a bit by low levels of it in the other two.

Stinging Nettle is very high in both Ca and Mag so that could be added as an extra boost for canna plants that like high cal/mag.

So, the plan is to use them all in a group crumble but I can certainly supplement or change up the mix if I see nutrient issues cropping up. And, by adding them as a top dress along with some RWC microbes, the plants should have access to the broad range of things in the quantities they need.

And, in addition to the above, I will have individual crumbles made for each of the different strains that I grow using the healthy leaves from each to further dial in the specific nutrient profile that differnt strains have. That's problably not even necessary or likely lead to any significant improvement, but we have the technology, might as well use it.

 

[ReservoirDog]

This documentation has been so helpful Azimuth, thank you.

I took in your advice on comfrey and it’s potential as a difficult weed, then recalled I had a neighbour who has exactly this problem. I picked half a compacted 5 gallon bucket, took three transplants and scooted. The plants were all just getting started and I didn’t want to hit them too hard.

I’m gonna take my chances with these.

I took a good look around my backyard again today looking for horsetail and was successful. I took a small sample to try and grow out front this year and I’ll be watching the backyard 7-10 plants guiding them along such that I may harvest in e few weeks.

 

[ReservoirDog]

I pulled quite a few lovely new branches from my willow tree and made tea from them to add to my “ foliar” spray for my seedlings. I’ll document this in my journal when I get off my butt and make an entry. Just had a couple difficult days is all, I’ll bounce back.

Little bit of leaf mould there on top of a decent dandelion harvest. I made sure to get as much of the root as I could this time. I’m going to separate out the roots, flowers and leaves for indiv. end products.

Wanted to show you where I get my leaf mould supply. To slow rain run of I build these weird structures, and it’s been decimated by my front yard garden project for which is supplied prob 3sq yards of fill, but there’s dozens and dozens of sacks of clippings and leaf mulch, each with a shovelful of dirt for microbes, under there.

It’s European style, a few rough posts then countless willow branches woven through. Sure glad I kept all these resources around now!

 

[ReservoirDog]

Veg Crumble

My GoTo veg crumbles this season are going to be Comfrey, Horsetail Fern and Stinging Nettle.

You can see from the following table that the combination of the three compares quite favorably to that of the gold standard of fish, coming in roughly at about 75% of most of the different inputs. Which is actually fine because I've heard several reports of fish being too potent and burning plants, so a lower level of nutrients might actually be beneficial.

Compared to dandelion, which is many people's default since they are readily available, my combination has higher levels of almost all the nutrients and they are each much easier to harvest in larger quantities.

In the following table I just show some of the major nutrients the plants contain, but there are also small amounts of all of the trace minerals as well, things like Aluminum, Boron, Cobalt, Copper, Manganese, Molybdenum, Nickel, Selenium, and Zinc.

The figures come from the appendices of the book, The Regenerative Growers Guide to Garden Amendments, by Nigel Palmer. Unfortunately there are no figures cited for 'N' which would have been super helpful.

.................................P.............K..........Ca..........Mg..........Fe.........Si...........S.............Cl...........Na.........
Fish (FAA)............836.8......1,013....718.8.......105.7.....2.57.....0.29....127.2......1,000.....109.3.......

Comfrey..............270.8.......1,025....31.52......34.15.....2.06.....15.4......8.32...........80.......0.58......
Horsetail Fern.......42.1.......876.5....358.1......90.92....6.74.....28.8....56.79.........300.......1.11......
S.Nettle...............35.34...........376.......861.........141.....1.57.....24.6.....70.17.....1,050.......0.55.......
....(av)........... ......116.1.......759.2....416.9........88.7.....3.54.....22.9.....45.10.....476.7.......0.70.......

Dandelion......... ....128...........485.......143.......53.4.......3.17.......28........33.5....1,340........3.25.......

The group is also pretty complementary towards each other with low stuff in one balanced out by high stuff in another.

Comfrey is often cited as a great standalone nutrient for garden plants, but you can clearly see from the table that it is nicely high in P and K, but pretty low in everything else.

Horsetail Fern is super high in iron (Fe) but that is buffered a bit by low levels of it in the other two.

Stinging Nettle is very high in both Ca and Mag so that could be added as an extra boost for canna plants that like high cal/mag.

So, the plan is to use them all in a group crumble but I can certainly supplement or change up the mix if I see nutrient issues cropping up. And, by adding them as a top dress along with some RWC microbes, the plants should have access to the broad range of things in the quantities they need.

And, in addition to the above, I will have individual crumbles made for each of the different strains that I grow using the healthy leaves from each to further dial in the specific nutrient profile that differnt strains have. That's problably not even necessary or likely lead to any significant improvement, but we have the technology, might as well use it.

Avi, your crumbles are side-dressed, is that right? And they are dried plant matter - reasoning is for long-term storage, do I have that right?
I put my fish hydrolysate on a heating mat (nothing crazy, shooting for steady 75ish) because such a cold spring this year and I want to keep it out of direct sun and near reg human activity. Knock on wood no otters or raccoon issues yet. You reckon that heat mat's kosher? Also I have a secret spot with lots of nettles. Ate a bunch year before last, this year I'm going to take some transplants and coax them along, might take a few years to be harvestable... I have a suspicion, based on nothing I can pinpoint, that they will be a touchy transplant. Any experience or inclinations there? Not sure what microclimate they'd like to live in. My research is conflicting.

 

[Azimuth]

Hey RDog,

Avi, your crumbles are side-dressed, is that right? And they are dried plant matter - reasoning is for long-term storage, do I have that right?

Top dressed, yes.

I dried the end of my comfrey harvest last year as a test and am quite pleased with the results. The dried product stores in a much smaller container than it would fresh, never mind what would be needed after making a JLF with it. And, by crumbling it down, it makes for easy dosing with measuring spoons. My initial experiments are using 1 tsp per gallon of pot size as a top dress and will replenish every two weeks.

It also makes dosing easy if you want to make a JLF with it by adding it to water and I'll experiment with different amounts to try to approximate the strength of the mix when I used it fresh.

I put my fish hydrolysate on a heating mat (nothing crazy, shooting for steady 75ish) because such a cold spring this year and I want to keep it out of direct sun and near reg human activity. Knock on wood no otters or raccoon issues yet. You reckon that heat mat's kosher?

"The main difference between hydrolysate and FAA is that the former is produced using only bacteria (lacto-bacilli) that cause fermentation while the latter incorporates fungi as well which produces a broader spectrum of available nutrients as well as providing an fungal inoculate for improving the quality of the soil."

Certainly keep it out of the sun. I know very cold temps halt the fermentation process until they go back up but your temp zone should work great.

Also I have a secret spot with lots of nettles. Ate a bunch year before last, this year I'm going to take some transplants and coax them along, might take a few years to be harvestable... I have a suspicion, based on nothing I can pinpoint, that they will be a touchy transplant. Any experience or inclinations there? Not sure what microclimate they'd like to live in. My research is conflicting.

They should transplant easily. They can become invasive as they spread by both seeds and underground stolons. Full sun to partial shade, and keep soil moist but not wet.

I put mine in a big, above ground planter and plant to cut off the flowers to keep it from making seeds.

Leaves and roots have good health benefits and I plan to harvest both for teas to drink and the leaves to dry for fertilizers.

 

[ReservoirDog]

Hey RDog,


Top dressed, yes.

I dried the end of my comfrey harvest last year as a test and am quite pleased with the results. The dried product stores in a much smaller container than it would fresh, never mind what would be needed after making a JLF with it. And, by crumbling it down, it makes for easy dosing with measuring spoons. My initial experiments are using 1 tsp per gallon of pot size as a top dress and will replenish every two weeks.

It also makes dosing easy if you want to make a JLF with it by adding it to water and I'll experiment with different amounts to try to approximate the strength of the mix when I used it fresh.


"The main difference between hydrolysate and FAA is that the former is produced using only bacteria (lacto-bacilli) that cause fermentation while the latter incorporates fungi as well which produces a broader spectrum of available nutrients as well as providing an fungal inoculate for improving the quality of the soil."

Certainly keep it out of the sun. I know very cold temps halt the fermentation process until they go back up but your temp zone should work great.


They should transplant easily. They can become invasive as they spread by both seeds and underground stolons. Full sun to partial shade, and keep soil moist but not wet.

I put mine in a big, above ground planter and plant to cut off the flowers to keep it from making seeds.

Leaves and roots have good health benefits and I plan to harvest both for teas to drink and the leaves to dry for fertilizers.

Sounds like a workable plan for the nettles, both the growing and harvesting/use. I used the leaves and upper plant as a spinach replacement everywhere, eggs, pizza, steamed with butter was lovely also. Basically everything somewhat edible is! I’m uncertain what yield I might expect from the homegrown amendments still to be grown given spatial allotments, but you’ve helped me sort out the where and how for nettles, I thank you.

Thought I’d add a splash of colour for you, a five gal pail of rhododendron flowers, 4/5 full when compacted as tightly as human strength and weight permits. The bush has already shown its gratitude with exceptional new growth in two days after cleanly picking the dead flowers. Usually I don’t get to it so early nor do as good a job… advantages for everyone/thing.

What would you do with such a haul (dear readers)?

I’m meant to be taking a short health break after concussion so my journal is on brief, very brief, pause. Don’t tell anyone I was here! One more visual treat to leave you with… the majestic dogwood tree…

 

[Azimuth]

Nice haul! I see one of four possibilities. Or maybe divide them up and do more than one.

1. Top dress them fresh on a garden with flowering plants.

2. Dry them for use later as a top dress, or in a Jadam ferment

3. Cover them with water in that bucket, add a little leaf mold soil or worm castings, slap on a lid, and use the extract in a few weeks/months when watering in flowering plants

4. Mix them with an equal amount of brown sugar and strain the liquid off in a couple weeks and use as a KNF input.
.............

What are the leaves? Look like forsythia.

 

[Azimuth]

Ok, about a week or two in on the SIPs and I'm already seeing some interesting things.

On the original, gravel bed SIP, the root growth is pretty robust. As the roots make their way through the soil they are nice and white and thick looking, more so than in the all soil based pots. It's almost like they can sense the reservoir and are morphing into the water root structure they'll adapt.

Maybe it's evaporation from the water pool or perhaps the soil mix in contact with the clay balls is wetter than average, but whatever it is, the roots are definitely different and more robust.

Once they hit the Rez they start branching out quickly into a fish boning structure which I assume means they are pretty happy.

On the other type, the cave with void structure, the roots are not discovering the water Rez quite so easily. This pot is built like those you see on the web, basically two buckets with a wicking pot connecting the two. My wicking pot also has the clay balls.

In this one, the roots found the connecting pot, but rather than head straight down to the pool of water like the other did, instead they started sliding out the side aeration holes. I mean the water is right there, maybe another inch down but instead they went out the side holes into the air gap. Pretty unexpected.

Both plants look quite happy with none of the over-watering droop I was concerned about so that's good.

I did up-pot a couple of additional clones to the gravel structure version to see how other strains react to this setup.

Another week in and the SIP plants are still the happiest, healthiest looking plants in the garden. While the roots were making their way down to the reservoir I only kept the bottom of the rez wet, not filled. Kind of as a prize for the water seeking roots to find when they finally got down there. I figured that as long as there was some moisture down there that there was no sense in adding more since what was there wasn't being used.

The original SIP plant now has several fishboning roots in the rez and water use has picked up so I filled the rez on that one for the first time and I'll see how long it takes to drain it.

And when I filled it I did so with some Horsetail fern Jadam extract diluted 30:1. So, a nutrient filled reservoir.

The other SIP's are a week or two behind the first one so maybe next week I'll expand the test based on how this first one does this week.

 

[Azimuth]

SIP Upate

I remain quite pleased with the SIP experiment as those plants continue to be the best looking plants in the garden. I guess the next step is to take them all the way through flower and see how they hold up. I've been using my top dressed Crumbles and early results there are encouraging.

With the SIP's I want to see how the water roots will hold up when constantly submerged. Until the roots establish themselves in the reservoir I've just been keeping a small, teaser, amount in the rez, but the first couple of plants now have enough fishboning roots that I am filling the reservoirs every day, topping the one that is not fully dry, and filling the other which seems to drain the reservoir every day.

I also have two bottom watering pots in flower at the moment, one almost halfway through and the other still in transition/stretch mode. What's interesting is the flowering plant drains the 8oz/200g water addition every day, and the weight has been increasing about 100 grams a day as measured before adding the 200 grams of water. Curious.

That would suggest that the plant is packing on half of the water weight in presumably bud weight each day which I know is highly unlikely. But I don't have another explanation for it at the moment.

I'm in the process of training the two SIP's I'll flower next so will likely give them more time in veg, but I'll probably flower them out in the smaller 1Q/1L clear containers just so I can learn what the root and soil structure looks like all the way through.

 

[Azimuth]

First comfrey leaves are pushing up through the soil, so the planting has survived the first winter. Very excited.

It's been a pretty cool spring so I guess it just took some time to get going.

 

[Azimuth]

SIP Container Verdict

I am pleased to report that the side-by-side test of the two different constructions of the SIP containers has confirmed my bias, and I will be going with the Gravel Bed version from here on.

That would have been my preference as long as the performance was at least close to the bucket-in-bucket set-up, but it actually seems to be noticeably better in many respects.

The Gravel Bed version has several advantages. First, it is easier and much quicker to build and the broader and more spread out moisture layer of the gravel base seems to encourage more roots from the soil layer to migrate down into the reservoir. I also get more fishboning of roots even before they hit the reservoir.

I suppose the downside is that the soil portion is only 2/3'rds of the container vs the other which has the soil as a full portion, but I'm not so sure that matters all that much as the roots that suck up the water would likely be less in the soil portion and more in the reservoir.

The other version works fine and I wouldn't hesitate to use it, but now that I've settled on my preference I'll build a couple of larger ones for the outdoor veggie garden. The larger ones I'll build with a fill pipe to make filling the reservoir easier, but the smaller, 1Q/1L takeout containers seem to work fine simply setting them in a bucket in which the water level is deeper than the overflow hole on the SIP container.

I'll also build a bunch of the smaller version and test out a variety of plants including those I am using for the crumbles and compare the results to those growing in normal soil containers.

 

[ReservoirDog]

Nice haul! I see one of four possibilities. Or maybe divide them up and do more than one.

1. Top dress them fresh on a garden with flowering plants.

2. Dry them for use later as a top dress, or in a Jadam ferment

3. Cover them with water in that bucket, add a little leaf mold soil or worm castings, slap on a lid, and use the extract in a few weeks/months when watering in flowering plants

4. Mix them with an equal amount of brown sugar and strain the liquid off in a couple weeks and use as a KNF input.
.............

What are the leaves? Look like forsythia.

Willow tree branches/leaves. I stripped the branches, cut to 1" pieces and have soaking w/ dandelion roots, sugar and leaf mould in hopes of creating a useful rooting solution for upcoming JADAM/KNF/BioDynamics/?-SIP grows and cloning efforts. I also had a successful nettle hunt and have a 5 gal batch on-the-brew, and transplanted some prime specimens into my front garden. Fingers crossed... Loving the thread Azimuth, a must-read that helps keep me from mistaking my longitude for my latitude!

 

[ReservoirDog]

BTW, Have you read Rudolf Steiner's Agricultural Course: The Birth of the Bio Dynamic Method? I have not, and only peripherally aware of the methods and man. Written in '25 it goes back some, to the birth of modern agriculture I would think, which Steiner apparently had serious issue with right off the hop. No doubt the events of the 1930s consigned the likes of such criticisms to history's compost bin where we, in our renewed desperation, now find them. I cannot give any impression of the theory or practice, simply curious whether you'd heard of him or the jpibiodynamics dot org, organisation. They offer products rather similar to your crumble, and much else besides.

 

[Azimuth]

I have not, but I will check it out. Thanks for the lead.

 

[Azimuth]

Applying the Crumble

To apply the crumble today, I took equal parts of Comfrey, Horsetail Fern, and Malted Barley powder and mixed that with some Red Worm Castings in a container. The very dry crumble and the moist RWC combined to produce a product that mostly held together but didn't stick to the measuring spoons I applied it with. I used about 2 tsp per gallon of pot size and I'll plan to add more every two weeks or so.

I opened up a pocket in the leaf mold mulch layer and plopped the measured amount in so that it would be in contact with the soil, but not sitting up exposed to the air. Then I misted it in with a spray bottle to get things moving.

Next time I'll try wetting the crumble before mixing it with RWC to see if it makes any difference and which I prefer.

If I were just adding the crumble itself I'd probably just sprinkle it on the top, but I've found leaving the worm castings sitting on top exposed to air turns them into a crust layer that doesn't seem helpful at all.

But, by adding the fresh castings I provide a ready source of composting microbes with every application so even if the pots are too small to sustain a longer term population of the microherd, the added new ones ensure there is enough biological activity to keep things moving. Plus, the castings add a bit of nutrients themselves.