The Gee Spot - You Finally Found It

[Azimuth]

This could mean that the molasses jacked the brix and the soil doesn't quite have enough P in it to hold it. The plants aren't photosynthesizing enough sugars for exudates.

Probably P, maybe even likely. Until you waxed poetic on its importance I really hadn't given it much thought. I started adding flowers to my worm bin toward the end of last season and gave an occasional F&F watering, but this plant is the first with any attention paid at all to it. The next plant got my top dressing and F&F since early on, and the following plant, the Net Pot SIP, will be the first with the flower crumble added to the mix.

So, things operate on garden time in Aziland and I'm slowly getting to where I want to be.

. I think P is your problem, or you aren't supplying enough light. Do you use an app like Photone to measure your light output?

I do have it on my phone but more as a curiosity. There's not much I can do given my environment, but I did lower the plants given the recent heat wave.

How is your weather, is pressure low?

Steady to rising.

 

[Gee64]

Probably P, maybe even likely. Until you waxed poetic on its importance I really hadn't given it much thought. I started adding flowers to my worm bin toward the end of last season and gave an occasional F&F watering, but this plant is the first with any attention paid at all to it. The next plant got my top dressing and F&F since early on, and the following plant, the Net Pot SIP, will be the first with the flower crumble added to the mix.

So, things operate on garden time in Aziland and I'm slowly getting to where I want to be.


I do have it on my phone but more as a curiosity. There's not much I can do given my environment, but I did lower the plants given the recent heat wave.


Steady to rising.

Ok cool, just checking boxes towards the endgame.

The net pot sip will be the true test having more P in the mix, but just the fact that you are right and solidly on the line of crossing into sequestration means your definitely on a solid footing and it won't take much more to put you over the 12 line for real.

If the up n comer does better than the one nearing droughting then you have hard proof that your crumbles and such really do hold valuable value.

It's good to see your efforts in their true colors. I'm excited for you, you have held your path and your getting close. I think you have all the pieces and finally they are coming together.

Once you get brix dialed it will be an easy mechanical adjustment to SIP the whole thing. Then your stylin'.

So because your goal is to be self sustaining add this to your overall philosophy....

If you can get all your inputs into high brix, your weed soil mix has no choice but to become high brix, it's just a sum of it's parts.

Start brixing everything in your yard and pay really close attention to the calcium lines around your property. Dolomite is really cheap from farm supply stores so get it into your soil at every opportunity and all your inputs will go up equally and as quickly as this one grow did. The rich get richer....

 

[Gee64]

Also Azi, your microbe potion.... If you make it from high brix used soil you will extract P miners galore, even more so than extracting from EWC.

So if you can cycle it with everything else it will refine as you make the next next batch.

At the end of the day calcium and P are nice, but the microbes run the show.

It's easy to add Ca and P, but finding good microbes not so easy.

It could set you apart from the herd.. Then you will have plenty of time to stuff my envelopes

 

[Azimuth]

I like that idea.

But first there has to be some P available to attract the right microbes.

 

[budnoob3]

Awesome stuff, I didn’t remember to add to my notes on compost that I do also add dead flowers and their root balls to my piles and worm bins. Also, while I don’t add sand to my worm bins, compost or garden for them I do add the bone meal, crushed/powdered shells, and coffee grounds etc which act as the grit my worms require. So for clarification, are you saying dead flowers add a good amount of P?
Quick research tells me that my bone meal and coffee grounds are both great sources of P but haven’t seen anything specific to flowers yet. I also add all the vegetable, fruit, berry and herb garden waste in there too.
Also, manure is a great source of P but too high in N for roots liking so I’m glad I don’t use manure for garden compost. I do have a separate pile that does include chicken, dog and other wastes but that’s just for environmental friendliness and not used in garden.

 

[Gee64]

I like that idea.

But first there has to be some P available to attract the right microbes.

There does. Bone meal is a good temporary source for your mix and for your input gardens to fortify everything until you can grow enough P of your own.

If you can raise P content in your inputs and grow/forage more inputs it won't take long.

Start now and what you harvest in the fall will likely be substantially higher P content. If you can raise P by 25% in your inputs, that transfers to your mixes and worm bins.

P is slow but it doesn't leach either so what you add to your input gardens before winter will be processed and available and still there for next years input crop.

You only get 1 cycle a year outdoors so starting earlier outside has greater value.

 

[StoneOtter]

Good morning all

 

[Gee64]

Good morning all

Good Morning Stone️. Hows the trimming and harvesting going? You're a busy guy these days

 

[Gee64]

It's getting close to 8 weeks of flowering for the 1st two clones. Time to start watching the trichs.

 

[StoneOtter]

Good Morning Stone️. Hows the trimming and harvesting going? You're a busy guy these days

It's not. I cut the light quite a bit to just keep her for a few days. We're off for a couple of days to the coast of Maine. When I get home it'll be time. Since this one seems to be an indica leaner I let her go, maybe get some night time meds. She still doesn't have any real amber development yet so there's time.

.

 

[Gee64]

It's not. I cut the light quite a bit to just keep her for a few days. We're off for a couple of days to the coast of Maine. When I get home it'll be time. Since this one seems to be an indica leaner I let her go, maybe get some night time meds. She still doesn't have any real amber development yet so there's time.

.

Beach time! Enjoy the getaway!

 

[Carmen Ray]

@Azimuth , the banana potion that I made last year. I can't remember how much of the concentrate I must put in 1 liter of water. It's the chopped banana peels in water with EWC. Please remind me. I have a potassium deficiency in my plants. tia.

 

[Azimuth]

There does. Bone meal is a good temporary source for your mix and for your input gardens to fortify everything until you can grow enough P of your own.

If you can raise P content in your inputs and grow/forage more inputs it won't take long.

Start now and what you harvest in the fall will likely be substantially higher P content. If you can raise P by 25% in your inputs, that transfers to your mixes and worm bins.

P is slow but it doesn't leach either so what you add to your input gardens before winter will be processed and available and still there for next years input crop.

You only get 1 cycle a year outdoors so starting earlier outside has greater value.

So, I certainly seem to have enough P that I don't have observable deficiencies.

Does that suggest there is a range of acceptable minimum levels? Maybe the plant takes what it needs first and the dump trucks get whatever's left over?

 

[Azimuth]

@Azimuth , the banana potion that I made last year. I can't remember how much of the concentrate I must put in 1 liter of water. It's the chopped banana peels in water with EWC. Please remind me. I have a potassium deficiency in my plants. tia.

That depends a little on how you made it, mostly ratio of water to peel.

I usually just cover the peels for maximum strength, and dilute it 1:30. I've seen ranges of 1:10 up to 1:100. It does get stronger with age and so should be diluted more the older it is.

1:30 is 2T / liter.

 

[budnoob3]

Based on some recent research I’ve been

So, I certainly seem to have enough P that I don't have observable deficiencies.

Does that suggest there is a range of acceptable minimum levels? Maybe the plant takes what it needs first and the dump trucks get whatever's left over?

based on some recent research I’ve done thanks to you guys, I learned a couple more things about P. It needs a lot of oxygen for uptake, having too much is also a bad thing hence avoiding manure, and also keeping it in check with broccoli, cabbage, and kale scraps for compost. I also saw what Gee said somewhere that it indicated if added in fall it will be best for plants in 4-6 months.

 

[Gee64]

So, I certainly seem to have enough P that I don't have observable deficiencies.

Does that suggest there is a range of acceptable minimum levels? Maybe the plant takes what it needs first and the dump trucks get whatever's left over?

Thats exactly how it works. Having enough to survive and having enough to reach high brix are 2 different things.

 

[Gee64]

Thats exactly how it works. Having enough to survive and having enough to reach high brix are 2 different things.

Having enough available P to haul all those exudates back down is equally as important as having enough P to haul nutrients up, and as the plant grows this amount needs to increase to both supply more nutrients and feed more microbes.

P is the main player and Ca sets the stage so P can do it's job. Once P is feeding both the plants and the microbes sufficiently the system becomes self sustaining if Ca, O2, and P remain available.

The difference between Ca and P is that you can dump Ca in and it's done, but P needs to be mined. If you just dump it in then the plant is happy with that and sees no need to pay the microbes with exudates, and brix drops to near zero, yet the plant looks fine. It just has no immunities and bugs move in. PM as well. All sorts of nasties.

So to be truly safe the only real way is to start mining P at birth. That flies in the face of stoner logic which generally dictates "veg" soil and "flower" soil. What you need is "healthy balanced" soil.

Like raising children, those that are fed a full healthy diet from birth have a better chance of a healthy adulthood and reproduction.

If you go to a fertility clinic because there are conception issues, the 1st thing they do is prescribe Vitamins (which is a contraction for vital minerals) and change your diet. They in essence raise your brix. After 6 to 8 weeks they start trying other things, but quite often the diet change does it. P is the love drug in humans too.

They need to straighten out Ca and P before trying anything else. Sound familiar?

Now that you understand brix better, go watch Rabenberg again. Take your crayons, make notes. Soilworks LLC is his channel.

Don't despair, every time you start a new round of soil your brix will be better. If you up P availability just a bit from where your current mix is at your in. Then your rich gets richer every round.

Fortify, fortify, fortify. I bet now you see why I put so much used weed into my system, it's the pefect high brix input.

If you fortify all your garden inputs then
you will really jump ahead fast. Use molasses a couple times a year on everything and make sure all your inputs have good fuzzy calcium lines and you will do really well. If they are crisp lines, spread some dolomite around.

Then all your potions get better too and all your rich get richer at once. Everything you have learned about brix isn't a weed thing, it's a plant thing. The rules apply to all.

Your mix is already borderline high brix you've done a great job on it. You just need one more step up and the spreadsheet talk a few weeks back pointed out the holes. Concentrate there and keep calcium up. Follow the refractometer, it doesn't lie.

Use it on all the leaves around your yard and fix the calcium lines as you go. Once the snowball starts rolling all you need to do is hang on and keep Ca available. I look for the calcium line before I read the number. If it's fuzzy brix are going up.

If you want to use inputs from your yard then dandelions, thistle, anything with thick milky white sap is a high Ca input. Anywhere dandelions or thistle flourish is a calcium deficient zone.

 

[Azimuth]

So for clarification, are you saying dead flowers add a good amount of P?

Healthy fruits and flowers have all the things fruits and flowers need and, if from a healthy and similar source plant, has everything in exactly the right ratios. That's why I have strain specific crumbles, so I can add exactly the right ratios instead of a good average of things from just random plants.

@Emilya Green has a thread dedicated to make three different versions of her dandelion extracts; one for flowers, one for leaves and stems, and the third for roots. She got a lot of her stuff in that regard from a site called "The Unconventional Farmer" or something like that.

In the book Jadam Natural Farming, Master Cho talks about the best fertilizer for your plants is other plants, and the same plants makes it even better, so the best fertilizer for strawberries is other strawberries.

P is used for both roots and flower/fruit apparently which may be one reason @Gee64 recommends getting started with it from the beginning.

Since I have other, preferred, uses for my cannabis flowers, I try for the next best thing; big showy flowers like peonies and daylilly (and Gee's lillies if I can get to his place on a moonless night ), since big showy flowers is what I'm trying to promote. Unfortunately I came to this process late and have had to increase the supply of my source plants.

The last couple of years I was focused on building my comfrey and nettle sources, and now I'm focusing on increasing my flower production.

Visitors: "Wow, you have a lot of pretty flowers!"
Me: "Yeah, whatever. I just want 'em for an amendment I can add to my soil."

 

[Azimuth]

If you want to use inputs from your yard then dandelions, thistle, anything with thick milky white sap is a high Ca input. Anywhere dandelions or thistle flourish is a calcium deficient zone.

That's where my input selections shine. My comfrey/nettle combination is better on almost all of the macro and micronutrients. Much easier to harvest in quantity as well!

Another really good combo looks to be Comfrey/S.Nettle. The two are very complimentary to each other. Really good Cal/Mag and less Cl, Na, and Al. Better P, K, Ca, Mg, S, but a bit lighter on Fe, and Si when compared to dandelion. If you pick complimentary plants, i.e. where one is high for a particular nutrient and the other is low, you can get a pretty nice profile that is reasonably strong in most without having too much of any one thing.

.................................P.............K..........Ca..........Mg..........Fe.........Si...........S.............Cl...........Na.........Al...
Fish (FAA)............836.8......1,013....718.8.......105.7.....2.57.....0.29....127.2......1,000.....109.3.......1.31

Comfrey..............270.8.......1,025....31.52......34.15.....2.06.....15.4......8.32............80.......0.58......0.31
S.Nettle...............35.34..........376........861.........141.....1.57.....24.6.....70.17.....1,050.......0.55........0.9
.....(av).................153.07.....700.5.....446.3......87.58.....1.82......20.0....39.25........565.......0.57.......0.61

Dandelion......... ....128..........485........143.......53.4......3.17.......28.......33.5......1,340.......3.25.......2.51

The difference between Ca and P is that you can dump Ca in and it's done, but P needs to be mined. If you just dump it in then the plant is happy with that and sees no need to pay the microbes with exudates, and brix drops to near zero, yet the plant looks fine. It just has no immunities and bugs move in. PM as well. All sorts of nasties.

I wonder if that's some of what's going on with my plant. The Jadam extracts are supposed to be readily plant available, touted as quite a good thing, but perhaps a different path is needed for high brix.

If the plant can bypass the microbes and that works against brix, hmmmm.

 

[Azimuth]

Start brixing everything in your yard and pay really close attention to the calcium lines around your property. Dolomite is really cheap from farm supply stores so get it into your soil at every opportunity and all your inputs will go up equally and as quickly as this one grow did. The rich get richer....

That's a great idea! Comfrey and nettle are my two primary inputs so I'll brix them and see what they are.