The Gee Spot - You Finally Found It

[Gee64]

Does raw carbon act different from composted carbon? So, if you used composted bark chips rather than raw, does that affect the inner workings?

In theory they should work the same, but composted carbon is humate, and raw carbon is a water sync that is about to become humate, so the root follows the water into the bark nug and grows a wad of cotton batten literally in each one of those bark nugs, which is a massive amount of surface area to absorb with.

I don't know if leaf mold or composted wood chips would work as well. If they weren't fully composted then I could see roots growing inside it, but as long as it's touching a root the root can suck cations off it. I just don't know if you would get as much fine root mass.

 

[Azimuth]

Based on your description above I thought the composted version would serve the CEC aspect but the nutrients would have been released leaving only the carbon skeleton but then I think of all the organic gardeners that use only compost to fertilize their gardens and that has to be more than just adding microbes.

I don't remember you listing bark chips as part of your soil mix. Part of the coco part for you?

 

[Gee64]

Based on your description above I thought the composted version would serve the CEC aspect but the nutrients would have been released leaving only the carbon skeleton but then I think of all the organic gardeners that use only compost to fertilize their gardens and that has to be more than just adding microbes.

I don't remember you listing bark chips as part of your soil mix. Part of the coco part for you?

I used The Answer in this Gaia mix. It is aged forest products. So bark mulch.

Coco is raw carbon too. Roots will grow into it microscopically as well. More evenly tho. Really nice featherdusters, but bark is easy to see how a root penetrates raw carbon, grows cotton batten inside, and waits for it to turn into a humate and start moving cations.

At least some of the composted leaf mold or wood chips is already humate, so if a root touches it then it will provide cations.

I don't know if that root would ever grow cotton batten like hairs tho to absorb as many cations is all. Otherwise a root touching a humate will get cations.

In perennials like trees the roots will eventually be attached to every humate, but in potted annuals I don't know if it would work as well.

 

[budnoob3]

Thanks Gee.

The plant was given 1 L of water yesterday. There really is no overwatering issue in my view.

PPFD is 741 at its highest point and closer to 550 on the lower colas.

Soil temps have been fluctuating wildly. They were down to about 15 C a couple of days ago and that must have been several hours. Today the soil is 20 C.

No.

So the only thing on the list that is a problem is the metabolism of the soil right? What can I do to help the plant? Shall I feed calmag at next feed, and possibly some microbes? Yesterday they got myco. I've been alternating kelp water and fish water, with myco once a week and Nourish once every 2 weeks. I do have molasses if that can help.

I can't heat the soil because the reptile heating mat that I have says that it shouldn't get wet. I tried having the mat against the side of the bag but it doesn't distribute the heat evenly that way as only a small part of the mat touches the bag, wasting most of the heat. I know I need to get some decent heating mats for next winter. It's just too costly for me at present.

Take reptile mat and put in a large 2 ga zip lock and zip tie around cord, make sure cord is elevated and place under a tile or slate. Put pot on top of slate and make sure power is connected to a tested GFCI circuit. Keep eye on things.

 

[Gee64]

With something like leaf mold I think, but I don't know, but I think that in order to have enough humates touching enough roots without the cotton batten rootballs forming, that you would need so much leaf mold touching so many roots that all that leaf mold would be too wet.

Only 1 way to see I guess. If we only knew someone growing clones that also had leaf mold kicking around to try a side by side experiment.

Hmmmm......

Measuring brix would tell the story.

 

[Gee64]

I bet blending a bit of leaf mold or composted wood into a soil mix would work as it would start the cation exchange immediately. Just not enough to make the soil soggy.

 

[Azimuth]

1/3 of my most recent mix is organics, evenly split between castings, compost, leaf mold and raw leaf crumble. None of that is very large particles so not sure how one could test what you're wondering.

I also have biochar which is noted for its CEC capacity.

 

[budnoob3]

So one of my hobbies is woodworking and as a result all of my worms and compost probably can tell us all better than anyone the differences between poplar, oak, cherry, mahogany, etc better than anything. I only know one thing, none of them have ever caused my plants harm.

 

[Azimuth]

At 4 days I hit the targeted LWA but looking at the trichs with a scope showed not much change to the stalks and heads so I gave it a half watering to bring it back a bit and now it's on its second droughting round. I'm now starting to see some elongation of the stalks so it seems like time plays a roll, at least visually.

It had been drinking 1L every other day so it got 1/2 L which brought it back more than I expected. Two days later it was droopy but still had a little turgor pressure evident so I let it go another day and I'm sure it will be fully wilted when lights come on today so I'll give it another half watering and watch the trichomes. Water is rain water plus a weak dose of dolo water, 35-40 ppm.

It's the end of week 8 for an 8-9 week strain (counted from first flush of pistils) so I think I'll do another couple of rounds of half waterings over the next week before harvest and see if that jacks the droughting response.

I've not been very impressed with my droughting results on my latest plant as I think the repeated rounds of droughting disrupted its ability to finish properly. I've had mostly clear trichs for longer than I should now so I assume the plant created the trichome structures but didn't have enough energy to fill them properly.

The plant also had bug issues (mostly mites this round), has lost all fan leaves and the rest of the plant is browning out so I'll likely harvest it this weekend and maybe feed it to the worms and plan on trying it again with hopefully a higher brix soil and therefore less bug issues because if it.

Kind of a shame as it was a pretty good looking plant before I droughted it (aside from the bug damage) and a new strain for me, but I'll just have to try it again in the future.

 

[budnoob3]

As I recall Azi mentioned the compost not heating up for him. I can tell you this much, it requires high N and green waste to get things cooking. Make sure you layer your greens and browns in main pile. Throw excess in secondary pile but also try to balance green and brown inputs in ratio. Primary pile should start steaming within 4 months and secondary within 6 or so. If you have winter temps and compost is healthy you will see steam all winter one they get going. If you’re not a healthy eater bug your vegan neighbors for inputs

 

[Gee64]

1/3 of my most recent mix is organics, evenly split between castings, compost, leaf mold and raw leaf crumble. None of that is very large particles so not sure how one could test what you're wondering.

I also have biochar which is noted for its CEC capacity.

All these will work, as long as you have enough raw carbon to keep the microbes alive until the plant can sustain them with exudates. I just don't know if they will promotes as much root growth.

 

[Gee64]

But in brand new soil with only raw carbon in it, mixing in some leaf mold or composted wood will immediately show a boost. That's one of many reasons I mix used soil with new carbon. It brings humates for a quicker start.

My mixes without ammendments are generally 1 part used soil, 1 part new carbon, and 1 part EWC.

 

[Azimuth]

As I recall Azi mentioned the compost not heating up for him. I can tell you this much, it requires high N and green waste to get things cooking. Make sure you layer your greens and browns in main pile. Throw excess in secondary pile but also try to balance green and brown inputs in ratio. Primary pile should start steaming within 4 months and secondary within 6 or so. If you have winter temps and compost is healthy you will see steam all winter one they get going. If you’re not a healthy eater bug your vegan neighbors for inputs

I know that and stated as much in my post with Bode. I didn't have enough greens from my lawn mowing to properly balance things out and heat things up but figured I would as the season went on. What I should have done was just use as much of the browns pile as I had grass clippings. I do want them in there as I want some trapped and converted N in my finished product.

I added blood meal and it is heating up, just not to the rate I wanted. Still, there are pro's to cooler composting. Cooler piles won't kill the weed seeds and some things one doesn't want in the finished product so monitoring inputs is important but good things happen regardless. Mother Nature doesn't high-heat compost hers.

And a properly built pile should be heating up in more like 4 days (not months) so not sure what you're talking about there.

This was my first year of a serious effort at a big compost pile so I'm learning things that I'll apply next year like correct moisture levels. I have aeration tubes in the pile to increase oxygen into it and a tarp to protect from rain and sun, and turn it every few weeks. In the past I've just been a casual composter but wanted to make a more serious effort this season and so far it looks like I will be well pleased with my results.

I've got the basics of a good composting system that I'll improve in coming seasons with the lessons learned from this one.

 

[Gee64]

I thinned out the RVDV clones today. I pruned out the main branches that were runty and a lot of lower side branching on the branches I kept.

Cube #1. Thinned and ready for flower.

Cube #2.

And the tote.

Overall there will probably be another branch or 2 that will fall behind and still get pruned out.

 

[Gee64]

I know that and stated as much in my post with Bode. I didn't have enough greens from my lawn mowing to properly balance things out and heat things up but figured I would as the season went on. What I should have done was just use as much of the browns pile as I had grass clippings. I do want them in there as I want some trapped and converted N in my finished product.

I added blood meal and it is heating up, just not to the rate I wanted. Still, there are pro's to cooler composting. Cooler piles won't kill the weed seeds and some things one doesn't want in the finished product so monitoring inputs is important but good things happen regardless. Mother Nature doesn't high-heat compost hers.

And a properly built pile should be heating up in more like 4 days (not months) so not sure what you're talking about there.

This was my first year of a serious effort at a big compost pile so I'm learning things that I'll apply next year like correct moisture levels. I have aeration tubes in the pile to increase oxygen into the pile and a tarp to protect from rain and sun, and turn it every few weeks. In the past I've just been a casual composter but wanted to make a more serious effort this season and so far it looks like I will be well pleased with my results.

I've got the basics of a good composting system that I'll improve in coming seasons with the lessons learned from this one.

What I found to really help my compost game was to have a carbon pile. Then for every green I added to the compost pile I added 2 carbons.

I find collecting the browns to be far more abundant, so this is the only way I have a chance to keep nitrogen in ratio.

I just chop browns up into 5gal buckets with garden pruners and then when I empty the kitchen compost which is predominantly nitrogens, I add the browns from the bucket. I mix it all weekly.

When I cook soil in tubs the hottest it gets is after 1 week when I open the tub to mix it the 1st time. Its quite hot. A bit hotter than a bath.

At 2 weeks it's warm-ish and after that not much heat.

Then I let it cook until the PH settles in to around 6.2-6.4.

You can smell it when it's hot.

 

[Gee64]

So one of my hobbies is woodworking and as a result all of my worms and compost probably can tell us all better than anyone the differences between poplar, oak, cherry, mahogany, etc better than anything. I only know one thing, none of them have ever caused my plants harm.

Sawdust is very dense carbon so it's more of a slow release carbon, but being dense it can hold a lot of water, so be careful not to add to much, but otherwise, its a great carbon source.

 

[Azimuth]

Browns seem to always be scarce when you're ready with the greens so what I did this year was make a big pile of browns from my spring cleanup. It's mostly left over leaves from last year's leaf mowing that didn't breakdown over the winter, twigs, dead grass, acorn caps, stuff like that. A pretty good mix of things actually.

This fall I'll screen some of the pile and store it in totes for use in my soil mixes and spread the rest of the pile across the garden and flowering plants, and will start a new pile with the fall garden/yard clean-up.

Circle of life and all that.

 

[Azimuth]

Sawdust is very dense carbon so it's more of a slow release carbon, but being dense it can hold a lot of water, so be careful not to add to much, but otherwise, its a great carbon source.

And some trees, like black walnut, have compounds in them that inhibit plant growth so knowing the source of your inputs of wood chips and sawdust is important.

 

[Gee64]

I like coco for soil carbon. I tout it all the time. It has a great density for water retention and it lasts an entire grow plus it releases K as it breaks down, and I use bark nugget mulch, so my rebuilds end up with partially decomposed bark mulch and then I add more fresh coco, but a pinch of bio char and a smidge of wood chips added too would likely be even better.

 

[Azimuth]

I need to add biochar to my garden as a water holding feature. The soil doesn't have enough other carbon in it yet to hold enough moisture in between rains so watering is a must which I'd like to get away from.