Plant Alchemy With KNF: Korean Natural Farming And Jadam

[Gee64]

Ah, OK. Yes, planning to take clones and then flower out the seedling. I've found seed plants to be much more robust with longer node spacing which is challenging in my space, so I'll take cuttings and use a clone for a mother plant for future cuts.


Tru Dat. I'm thinking more like 4-5 weeks.


That hasn't been my experience, but haven't used a bubble mist clone yet either.


Yes.


I already have all my SIPs built in 2G buckets for my perpetual so I'm unlikely to invest in more

The best plan is the one you can execute the best, and now your knowledge base is pulling you in directions untravelled.

I would go with what you know, and see how your soil does. You can always make changes later.

Once you have a mother plant then you can sacrifice clones to science whenever you want.

Getting your soil to where you want it is a great basic to have behind you.

Then its easy to try different things.

Take the route that best fits your plan, until your happy with your dirt.

 

[Azimuth]

Ok, good advice. I'll plant it in the 1L to get the second shot at myco. Since this is my first time using it I want to see all it can do.

I agree that the soil piece is the most important step to get right and then I can experiment at will from there. It's what I like to do anyway, so should fit right in with my approach.

 

[scottreid1966]

Ok, good advice. I'll plant it in the 1L to get the second shot at myco. Since this is my first time using it I want to see all it can do.

I agree that the soil piece is the most important step to get right and then I can experiment at will from there. It's what I like to do anyway, so should fit right in with my approach.

You're telling me! I just messed up 2 grows with PM by reusing soil and some of it came from an outside girl.

SOIL, SOIL, SOIL... Live and learn, DOH!

 

[Azimuth]

I'm running a bit low on my Jadam Veg Nutes so I thought I'd mix up a new batch.

This round is going to be:
4P FAA (Fish Amino Acid)
2P Comfrey JLF
2P Stinging Nettle JLF
1P Seaweed JLF
1P WCA (Water Soluble Calcium)

That mix will give me 80% nutes, split between fish (fungal) and plant (bacterial), 10% growth hormones, enzymes and sea based minerals, and 10% calcium. The extracts are a mix of Jadam and KNF with different dilution factors so there was some math involved.

We'll see how the plants like it at the next watering, and I'll be primarily looking for any complaints.

 

[Bode]

That should boost the grow! Let's see how much. Hapy Smokin'

 

[Danishoes21]

I'm running a bit low on my Jadam Veg Nutes so I thought I'd mix up a new batch.

This round is going to be:
4P FAA (Fish Amino Acid)
2P Comfrey JLF
2P Stinging Nettle JLF
1P Seaweed JLF
1P WCA (Water Soluble Calcium)

That mix will give me 80% nutes, split between fish (fungal) and plant (bacterial), 10% growth hormones, enzymes and sea based minerals, and 10% calcium. The extracts are a mix of Jadam and KNF with different dilution factors so there was some math involved.

We'll see how the plants like it at the next watering, and I'll be primarily looking for any complaints.

Hey Azi Congrats on your MOTM win

as I read your Jadam veg nuts it just reminded me I started seen stinging nettle come up around were I live now. Time to harvest.

 

[Azimuth]

Thanks, Dani.

Stinging nettle is really high in the lesser nutrients/minerals, especially cal and mag, but not so good on NPK. But, when coupled with something like comfrey, they make a  really good combination. In fact, it's become my favorite. I had been using horsetail fern before I had the nettle but have now replaced it with the nettle because it complements the comfrey so well.

Both have really long tap roots and can be difficult to eradicate. Both can spread by seed, although there are sterile versions of comfrey, and the nettle also spreads via rhizomes so I grow mine in a container and don't let them flower.

 

[Azimuth]

Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!

Today I went in for a closer look at my plants to scope for bugs. I already knew I had a thrip issue on the 12/12 ACDC seedling, but then I discovered mites on another plant.

Usually I would then go to war with daily sprays of the sink sprayer and an every three day spray with Safer's Insect Killing Soap until I "won", but this time I'm going to treat it like an experiment and see if I can apply some Jadam knowledge to the task.

It will be great if it works since it will be a simple soil drench that could be even used as a preventative. I typically get an outbreak of one of the two bugs after each up-pot which is super annoying so having something in my tool kit to counteract it would be killer.

So, the bugs get a reprive for now. Hopefully I'm not setting up a bug overrun scenario, but ironically I want enough pest pressure to more easily gage the success of the experiment.

So, a couple of weeks in on this experiment and I'm seeing what I think are promising results. I still have the mites and thrips, but their populations are not exploding like I would expect in an untreated scenario. Also it seems as though I'm seeing less and less adults and more of the smaller juveniles, though I honestly don't count them. That would suggest the adults are dying off and the eggs they already laid are hatching.

What I did was to take the bug mix I top dress with (equal parts of malted barley and the meals of crustacean, karanja, and neem) and started a JLF water extraction with them and have been using the extract water when adding to my reservoirs.

In addition to the common use as a foliar, the neem and karanja are supposed to also be able to work as a systemic after being taken up by the plant so maybe that's what I'm seeing. I saw virtually no improvement for the first 10 days or so and I attribute that to the need for the microbes to begin breaking down the material first before it can be absorbed by the plant. However, after that first 10 day period I seem to be seeing improvement in the form of lower numbers of bugs.

In fact, my latest SIP plant, a small clone that had pretty bad mite pressure has started greening up the new growth and I only noticed a few mites on the leaves.

I've done no spraying nor any other topside application of anything, though today I am going to spray a heated extract of sunchoke which is supposed to be a natural pesticide and useful for controlling "aphids, mites, and most moths." If it proves effective, I'll switch over to a water extract of it since that's an input I can grow in my garden.

Many of the denser inputs like meals and fish used for JLF require a minimum of 3 months to process as opposed to the 10 days for fruits and leaf material, so hopefully it will become more effective with time and my issues of bringing in mites and thrips with each up-potting will be a thing of the past.

 

[Azimuth]

Today was up-potting day for my Strawberry CBD plant. Two weeks old and working on node 4.

Brand new variety for me, and a new grow mix to go with it. I decided to go with:

2P Organic Material (1P Leaf Mold, 1P Worm Castings)
2P Carbon (1P Coco, 1P Crumbled Leaves)
2P Soil (Old soil from previous rounds, including roots)
1P Biochar
1P Sand
2P Perlite

Normally I would add some minerals and meals as well but I can add the meals later as Jadam extracts, and I assume I'm getting lots of minerals from my leaves and I want to see how the mix does without those additions.

I misted and sprinkled the root ball with myco's and then transferred the seedling from its 4oz starter cup to a 1L SIP.

Game on!

 

[Bode]

You'll need some extra nitrogen to help break down the leaves and leaf mold. Should work very well! Happy Smokin'

 

[Azimuth]

You'll need some extra nitrogen to help break down the leaves and leaf mold. Should work very well! Happy Smokin'

Thanks @Bode . This is the mix I worked out with @Gee64 's help. The idea is that the organic material is there to feed the plant and the carbon inputs are there to feed the microbes. I'm anxious to see how it works as my original thinking was that the carbon elements would be much like burying woodchips in your garden, and how they steal N from the plants until they get broken down.

But, the theory as I understand it at least, is that as long as the organic material is fully done composting, that breakdown process won't take place and the elements will simply be food for the biota.

New ground for me, so that's why I'm interested to see how it works.

 

[ReservoirDog]

Hiya Azimuth, I hope you are well and your latest veg mix sounds like what the doctor ordered! (Hope so, because mine are much the same - though I still use a horsetail-like plant heavy in silica that grows in my pond).

Are you running any vermicompost? I know I’ve shared my RezDog Ultra-cast recipe but I’ve made a huge step forward in efficiency and it’s kinda blowing my mind, wanted to pass along.

So I transplanted nettles, comfrey, horsetails into my “fertilizer forest”, well not the horsetails, that’s the fert-pond where I also get water, but anyway in the fall I harvested, chopped and then froze and over the winter fed the chopped up nettles, dandelion root, bull kelp etc but they were still in visible pieces. Worms consumed it faster when all chopped up too and it got me thinking….

So instead I tried putting everything in a blender now, all together, and then….. Well, first gonna give almost the full list again, I’ve think I’ve added a couple new ones:

Comfrey, Nettle, horsetail, dandelion root, willow tips, fresh bull kelp, eggshells, endomycorhizals, labs/bokashi, 5 yr old leaf mulch, mushroom-grow compost, cannabis larf, … might’ve forgot something…. Oh, I found a very old jar of spirulina so a teeny tich of that too… some DE can go in too - I read that it doesn’t hurt worms but does protect against mites and others.

But the really cool new development is, that I put it all in a blender with some fermented brackish seawater (low salt) or pond water, frappe the f¥€I< out of it and then pour into this:

This Dollar-store thing makes very large ice cubes, I assume for soup stock or something. Normal size works fine too.

The crazy awesome thing is that they love it and because it is so fine the worms consume all of it way, waaaaaay faster than even the finely chopped stuff. I mean, way faster. This method is cutting the time to process castings in half - possibly more, almost certainly more.

They love the moisture too, just like when you freeze a piece of old melon or fruit for them and they love it, but this is such a massive improvement. It means that you don’t have to screen the castings at all if you wish, and the speed, truly breathtaking, at least half the time and I really have made sure it was actually consumed and not just melted and hiding from me, there’s no sign of it, just castings.

Is a no-brainer mate. You don’t have to go to the extent I do with ingredients, but blender up and freezing into cubes is revolutionary to my operation which, as you know. Prolly lots do it but I haven’t seen any yet.

 

[Azimuth]

Hey RezDog, great ideas! But I'll have to have you convince my wife to use the kitchen blender to chop up the goodies. (Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation... )

Finely minced inputs processing faster makes total sense. Maybe I could look into a second hand processor at a yard sale or something. I do like the idea of not having to screen the castings when they're ready for use.

Like you, I have started running all of my inputs through my worm bin including things like neem, karanja, and crustacean meals, as well as sand, azomite, stone dust, char dust, etc. I just harvested my first batch so I'm excited to see how it works.

For my Jadam Veg extract, I do use the horsetail fern when I don't have enough s.nettle, but only then. The nettle almost perfectly complements the comfrey in that the elements that one is high on the other is low on. But, both horsetail fern and comfrey are high in K, so my concern was that I might get an excess of K when just using the two alone together.

Your blend has many more inputs so I would think things would even themselves out a bit on the whole.

Regarding the ice cubes, you don't find the coldness to be an issue with the worms? The stuff probably processes better with the water than it would simply grinding up the dry ingredients in a spice grinder, though for that you'd also have to pre-dry the inputs.

That's what I do for my excess harvest of the plant matter - dry the inputs. They store in much smaller footprints that way.

This season I plan on 5 gallon Jadam extract batches of comfrey and s.nettle, and a few others in smaller quantities. For those, I'd imagine that letting them freeze like you do with your ice cubes further bursts the cell walls leading to faster breakdown as well.

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Azimuth]

"Houston, we have a problem."

My new soil mix is producing an 'N' deficiency after only a week or two which is a new one for me as my mix has usually gone about 6 weeks until deficiencies start up. The only changes made to the mix recently were adding the two carbon inputs, coco and dried leaf crumble.

@Gee64 has said he has used coco successfully in his mixes so that points to the leaves as the issue. That is consistent with my earlier concerns that, like the admonition about not burying wood chips in the garden because they will steal the 'N' from the soil as they break down, the same is likely proving true for the leaves.

My instinct is to make up a new batch of soil leaving out the carbon inputs and shifting them up to a mulch layer, just like Mother Nature does it, and leave it to the microbes and worms to pull in down in the soil on their schedule. I could add just the coco but I'm trying to produce my mix exclusively from local sources if possible.

My pots are not big enough to add in all that is necessary for the entire grow anyway so I'll be supplementing with my extracts and worm castings along the way.

So, Gee, what are your thoughts?

 

[Gee64]

"Houston, we have a problem."

My new soil mix is producing an 'N' deficiency after only a week or two which is a new one for me as my mix has usually gone about 6 weeks until deficiencies start up. The only changes made to the mix recently were adding the two carbon inputs, coco and dried leaf crumble.

@Gee64 has said he has used coco successfully in his mixes so that points to the leaves as the issue. That is consistent with my earlier concerns that, like the admonition about not burying wood chips in the garden because they will steal the 'N' from the soil as they break down, the same is likely proving true for the leaves.

My instinct is to make up a new batch of soil leaving out the carbon inputs and shifting them up to a mulch layer, just like Mother Nature does it, and leave it to the microbes and worms to pull in down in the soil on their schedule. I could add just the coco but I'm trying to produce my mix exclusively from local sources if possible.

My pots are not big enough to add in all that is necessary for the entire grow anyway so I'll be supplementing with my extracts and worm castings along the way.

So, Gee, what are your thoughts?

Well you need carbon. Your leaf mold is likely the cause, but the only way to know for sure is to remove it from the equation. Completely. At least in one pot to see.

 

[Gee64]

Well you need carbon. Your leaf mold is likely the cause, but the only way to know for sure is to remove it from the equation. Completely. At least in one pot to see.

Did you add fresh myco?

 

[Azimuth]

Well you need carbon. Your leaf mold is likely the cause, but the only way to know for sure is to remove it from the equation. Completely. At least in one pot to see.

The issue, I think, is not leaf mold, but fresh, dried, and crumble leaves. I used the fresh, dried leaves for part of the carbon piece based on your earlier comment that the leaf mold would count as an organic input, not carbon.

I do also have leaf mold in there as part of the organic third.

My initial thought is to remove the fresh dried leaves from the mix, and use them as a mulch layer giving the microbes access to it without intriducing the composting element that I suspect is happening now. Not much I can do about that now but I can change the mix for the larger pot at upcan.

Did you add fresh myco?

I started the seed directly in the 1L container and did use myco when I planted it. I have topdressed with worm castings and misted in. I could try a worm casting drench I suppose.

 

[Gee64]

The issue, I think, is not leaf mold, but fresh, dried, and crumble leaves. I used the fresh, dried leaves for part of the carbon piece based on your earlier comment that the leaf mold would count as an organic input, not carbon.

I do also have leaf mold in there as part of the organic third.

My initial thought is to remove the fresh dried leaves from the mix, and use them as a mulch layer giving the microbes access to it without intriducing the composting element that I suspect is happening now. Not much I can do about that now but I can change the mix for the larger pot at upcan.


I started the seed directly in the 1L container and did use myco when I planted it. I have topdressed with worm castings and misted in. I could try a worm casting drench I suppose.

I would try a myco drench just to make sure. Sometimes myco doesnt link up on the 1st go and the plant gets really light and yellow-looking. The 1st true leaves may start to self consume.

What temp is your soil, is it in the high 60's or better? Also if the soil is too wet that can cut off oxygen, which can look like a nitro deficiency.

A week is too quick for dried leaves to start composting to the point of hogging the nitro. That would have to be coming from a carbon source that is already actively composting. Is your EWC fully finished?

 

[Gee64]

Here it is. Remember this part of the convo? This could be whats happening. Did you use any coco in this mix?

Starvation can mimic a nitro def. No available carbon (as in too dense so its not released quick enough) can mimic a nitro def.

Carbon is carbs and nitro is proteins. Carbs are the fuel source to power protein synthesis. A young plant requires this from the soil until it can set up its system (get established) to pull the carbon from the air.

Not telling you what/how to do but.... Your system your building is very cool, you know I'm a huge fan of it so again but..... You need to put more detail in the process and less in the ingredients.

My recomendation is to remove carbon from the equation for now, and get all your proteins working and here is why. Carbs are carbs. They are fuel. So use coco as your carb source. Take all things leaf out...for now. Grow a year with coco and perfect your meals, potions, voodoo, etc. Once you are consistently getting good results then change your carbon source. By then your leaves, hot compost, etc will all be fully finished and READY for use so you will be introducing carbon and not issues.

You are trying too many things at once and in a hurry and its biting you in the A$$ from many directions. You need to slow the science down, use a proven system, and convert to your end game methodically.

Like I said, not telling you what to do.... just telling you where I have tripped and stumbled on many paths.

 

[Gee64]

LOLOL @Keffka you f!@#er! You nailed it