Stanks Switch It Up In 2019

[Maritimer]

Glad to see you a bit better.
Your gardens will do better, when you are back on point.
Your convalescence and recovery is the paramount concern to us.

 

[Graytail]

Stank, that burning stabbing tingling stuff sounds exactly like acute tendonitis. I had to deal with it for awhile until I figured it out. But you probably know exactly what it is - just sayin'. Once I realized it was caused by tension, I could get a grip on it.

You say the Balls Deep straightened out after a month or so? That jibes with what I was thinking. I've fooled around with the HB blend, sometimes upcanning before the cook is done, sometimes cooking a single pot at a time. Early on, I found that you can wet down a stale dry bin of soil, warm it up, and it'll come back lush and fertile within a few weeks. I've seen plants do what you described - perk up after a couple weeks in new poorly cooked soil. I'm thinking that the soil can cook in a pot as well as a large bin. Maybe not "as well", but enough. I don't know at what rate your ingredients break down, so some processes might continue for too long. Dunno. But I bet if you wet down your sour soil and warm it up, it'll stabilize and work.

Plants look great! I like the swollen knobby buds.

 

[StoneOtter]

Good to hear from you Van! One additional thing that I wonder about in my soil situation is that our Roots soil base we use is coco rich. I've heard others say after time coco changes and goes acid. I'm not sure what this means exactly but in less than a year the rev changed the recipe from all coco to mostly peat or all peat from what I gather. That tells me his original coco was wrong whatever the problem was. I've been waiting for my original recipe soil to fail in some way for that reason and have gone to FFOF as base and 80% peat 20 coco just this week for a cook. Food for thought. Feel better brother!

 

[StoneOtter]

Dang, it's pretty obvious the difference between in and out cooking!

 

[Van Stank]

Stank, that burning stabbing tingling stuff sounds exactly like acute tendonitis. I had to deal with it for awhile until I figured it out. But you probably know exactly what it is - just sayin'. Once I realized it was caused by tension, I could get a grip on it.

You say the Balls Deep straightened out after a month or so? That jibes with what I was thinking. I've fooled around with the HB blend, sometimes upcanning before the cook is done, sometimes cooking a single pot at a time. Early on, I found that you can wet down a stale dry bin of soil, warm it up, and it'll come back lush and fertile within a few weeks. I've seen plants do what you described - perk up after a couple weeks in new poorly cooked soil. I'm thinking that the soil can cook in a pot as well as a large bin. Maybe not "as well", but enough. I don't know at what rate your ingredients break down, so some processes might continue for too long. Dunno. But I bet if you wet down your sour soil and warm it up, it'll stabilize and work.

Plants look great! I like the swollen knobby buds.

Well I am 95% sure I have herniated disks in there the C6 C7 area and I am 100% sure all the surrounding muscles are just tensing to protect the injured area. I tend to be stubborn and continue to try to operate as if nothing is wrong and do as much physical activity and it finally caught up to me.

I have thought about breaking out the tarp and mixing the soil up again.....but I don't have any where warm to cook it. Still too cold outside to do it.....and I don't have room in the house for trash cans full of soil. Its almost like its anaerobic....or semi anaerobic since its not smelling horrible. And man do the fungus gnats seem to be drawn to it....so I know the stuff isn't breaking down well in the current process.

In the future, I will make sure to do enough cooks in the summer time to get me through the winter time. This is just going to be a tricky act to try and save the cuts that I want to keep around. I might move a couple 5 gallon buckets worth of the winter batch upstairs next to the fireplace and see if I can't get a decent cook going.

The rest of the issue is that I am not 100% sure that the cuts are savable honestly. They just don't look healthy....at least depending on the cut. For instance....I have two cuts of the Afghani going...one of them the roots look fantastic while the other one looks horrible. I transplanted both of them into reclaimed soil in hope of getting one of the two to get growing healthy. I really don't want to lose the Afghani cut.....its a gem.

Luckily the KA5 and Grandpa Glue cuts seem to be in a pot with soil that isn't as toxic. I am toying with the idea of buying a couple bags of Kind Soil just to transplant them and get them going healthy again if the reclaimed soil doesn't work.

 

[Tony Urban]

Sounds like one hell of a shitty situation overall. Lets hope the pain and discomfort go away. I have been meaning to scout out a Tai Chi place in town to help with overall health.

Plants are looking good to me but you know them best. My original mix of soil was done outside but most of the last few batches of amendments and such cooked in the basement. Similar to you. Makes me wonder if this is one of the issues I am having in my soil. Perhaps some amendments breakdown at a normal rate and others do not.

 

[Van Stank]

Sounds like one hell of a shitty situation overall. Lets hope the pain and discomfort go away. I have been meaning to scout out a Tai Chi place in town to help with overall health.

Plants are looking good to me but you know them best. My original mix of soil was done outside but most of the last few batches of amendments and such cooked in the basement. Similar to you. Makes me wonder if this is one of the issues I am having in my soil. Perhaps some amendments breakdown at a normal rate and others do not.

I sense a name change in this profile somewhere.......care to refresh my memory or are you actually just joining us here "Tony".

 

[Pennywise]

Hopefully your cuts survive until spring. Don’t suffer long and get to a doctor just to be sure.

 

[Tony Urban]

I sense a name change in this profile somewhere.......care to refresh my memory or are you actually just joining us here "Tony".

UrbanAchiever...sorry bud lol

 

[Conradino23]

At this point I have to recommend a soil analysis. Just find a place that does it and send a sample. It’ll take the guessing out of the equation.

 

[Van Stank]

Sounds like one hell of a shitty situation overall. Lets hope the pain and discomfort go away. I have been meaning to scout out a Tai Chi place in town to help with overall health.

Plants are looking good to me but you know them best. My original mix of soil was done outside but most of the last few batches of amendments and such cooked in the basement. Similar to you. Makes me wonder if this is one of the issues I am having in my soil. Perhaps some amendments breakdown at a normal rate and others do not.

No clue....but I gotta think that there is a catalyst that is missing from the process and I gotta think its necessary heat. Normally a 30-45 day cook is sufficient. I am at over 90 days with this current batch and the cuts I put in there 2 weeks ago are just now starting to show signs of starting to grow. I mean thats insane.....when my soil is full of energy and really ramped up, I see crazy quick growth after transplants...usually within 2 days. But 2 weeks and not a half inch of growth and leaves just dying and falling off down low?

 

[Tony Urban]

Yeah I think you are on to something. I basically have two full garbage bins of soil, and a large tote full.

The 3 bins of soil are in different stages basically. 1 has been amended and composting for 8-10 months. 1 is amended and composting for around 4-5 months. The third bin is almost empty, awaiting the soil from the finishing flowers. All the cooking happens in the basement now.

But. I have been considering taking a full bin of soil to a family farm. Dumping some off to be mixed with some manure and compost. Cook that for a while before taking it home and mixing it with the other bins. Breathe some life into the soil.

I gotta send some soil in to get tested. I keep saying it over and over again. One of these days it will happen.

 

[InTheShed]

Glad you're up and moving but damn those cervical vertebrae! Everything seems to be a mixed bag in the basement, having figured out the problem without a current way to solve it.

There was a discussion when you moved about heat mats for under the plants. Would those raise the temp of the totes enough to get things moving with the soil?

 

[Tony Urban]

Glad you're up and moving but damn those cervical vertebrae! Everything seems to be a mixed bag in the basement, having figured out the problem without a current way to solve it.

There was a discussion when you moved about heat mats for under the plants. Would those raise the temp of the totes enough to get things moving with the soil?

Uh oh, Shed knocked a few cobwebs out of the dudes memory bank. I actually used a seed heat mat under the big tote bins when I tried growing plants in them. Worked pretty good. Might have been a bit better had I put a bunch of breathing holes around the bins for some oxygen. Some of the best harvests I have had to date, with massive root mass in the shape of the bins.

Pretty good idea to pop that seed mat under one of my big soil bins.

 

[FutRfarmer]

Balls on the funk! I did see hydro farm has a heat mat on amazon 60 x 21 for $95. I was thinking of getting a few for under the 8 x 8 also a 48 x 21 mat for $32, sorry to hear about the pains brother

 

[Neiko]

I'd say it's definitely your cool temps in the basement. Ideally you want to cook the soil above 65 degrees but mid to upper 70's is best. I bet your soil either hasn't completely cooked or it has gone dormant. I struggle with keeping soil active in the winter too. I'm dealing with it now. Newly planted plants take longer than normal to dig in and will eat their leaves until they do. Being in the warm tent brings the soil back to life. There is also a period during the cook where the soil can be toxic to plants. Do you have room in a tent to store your soil? I can't remember if you took the 10x10 down. Oh and if the totes or bins are sitting on the concrete floor that will make it even worse. Spring is right around the corner, this too will pass.

 

[StoneOtter]

So I have a 44 gal barrel mixed new 5 days ago. I took a temp study on the outside of the barrel this morning. My floor is 71 degrees. From the floor to around 16 inches up the temp is low 70's. Like 71 to 73. From the middle up it's 81. I'm thinking the floor is keeping the lower section from cooking as well, The area not more directly in contact with the floor reinforces your thoughts somehow.
I don't understand why the extended cook time didn't allow it to properly work though.

 

[Van Stank]

Glad you're up and moving but damn those cervical vertebrae! Everything seems to be a mixed bag in the basement, having figured out the problem without a current way to solve it.

There was a discussion when you moved about heat mats for under the plants. Would those raise the temp of the totes enough to get things moving with the soil?

Thanks Shed....yeah the cervical vertebrae are a different beast. I have been used to the lower back injury for so long......where as long as I avoid certain motions I am generally comfortable and even then I have learned that I can trash the lower back with physical work but as long as I use proper form and get a good nights sleep, the area resets every day.

Not so with the neck area. I struggle with finding a tolerable position to even sit or stand in where the muscles aren't just churning in knots and building up lactic acid and burning like hell. I do a lot of pacing with my hands behind my back trying to stretch and help with the tension. That makes life real difficult. I thought the lower back was bad.....but I can't seem to avoid irritating the neck and shoulder area like I can with the lower back.

Working on a couple solutions for the current soil problem. I am going to swap the soil into smaller 5 gallon buckets and bring a couple of them up and set them near the wood burner. The general temp of the upstairs is 68-69 degrees if we aren't running a fire and its closer to 80 when we are running the wood burner. I think those temps are 5 degrees or so higher near the insert so thats going to be the first thing I do.

I can't afford to throw more energy (meaning watts) at the problem. Sure it would be easy to get a big 400 watt heat matt and have my soil on that, but we just can't afford to run 1 or 2 of them for a month at a pop. I think once we get the climate controlled area where I can keep the temps in the 70s, we will be fine. My other solution for this year will be to mix my yearly requirement of soil at the end of spring and cook in the nice warm summer temps. Just eliminating the winter cook might make the most sense. I know @beez0404 has been on my case for getting a used cement mixer to do all my mixing, so doing it all in one weekend with cement mixer might be the most fool proof solution.

He also had the good idea of having a foam box where I could maybe regulate the temp better for the cooks....which is another great idea but its not tested at this point. I think I might experiment with that idea though. I know what the results of outdoor soil cooks are.....and aside from the inconvenience of needing to mix up a few hundred gallons of soil in a short period and needing to buy more soil bins, it will likely fix my future issues with badly cooked soil.

 

[Van Stank]

I'd say it's definitely your cool temps in the basement. Ideally you want to cook the soil above 65 degrees but mid to upper 70's is best. I bet your soil either hasn't completely cooked or it has gone dormant. I struggle with keeping soil active in the winter too. I'm dealing with it now. Newly planted plants take longer than normal to dig in and will eat their leaves until they do. Being in the warm tent brings the soil back to life. There is also a period during the cook where the soil can be toxic to plants. Do you have room in a tent to store your soil? I can't remember if you took the 10x10 down. Oh and if the totes or bins are sitting on the concrete floor that will make it even worse. Spring is right around the corner, this too will pass.

Well I can tell you that based on what I have seen on last years experience (Same thing happened but I blamed it on 'the funk' ) and this years experience, that there is certainly a point of toxicity to my soil if the cook isn't complete. Some plants have been more resilient to it than others.

No I don't have the 10x10 up anymore. I am growing in a 5'x5' and 4'x4'. The bins aren't sitting on the floor.....they are on 4 wheel dollies so they are sitting at about 55 degrees. My tents only get about 64 degrees right now. Man I hate growing in cold temps. I would much rather be growing in the high 80s or even low 90s than growing in the 50s and 60s .

I know its going to pass.....but this is like a replay of last year where I lost everything. So frustrating.....certainly explains why the fungus gnats are so drawn to these bad batches of soil.....and here I was blaming the funk on the gnats not even thinking it could have been the soil. LOL...no more! This will be the last of the funk around these parts! I am glad to finally feel confident in knowing what the cause of the issues the past two winters have been. I can't tell you how frustrating it was to just watch everything die on me last year and not really understand what actually happened (not that fully do now.....but I at least know the variable that has been consistent in the troubled times).

 

[Van Stank]

Balls on the funk! I did see hydro farm has a heat mat on amazon 60 x 21 for $95. I was thinking of getting a few for under the 8 x 8 also a 48 x 21 mat for $32, sorry to hear about the pains brother

Checked it out....it might be an option for the foam box idea. Its drawing a bit more watts than I would want (140 watts is what the Hydrofarm website lists it at) but less than most that I have seen. Thanks for the idea brother!