Thirvnrob's Power Plant - TLO Soil In SIP Containers

Thirvnrob said:
@StoneOtter if I do go straight to the final pots, should I still flip early? Will the roots fill the bag?
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In a 10 gallon final bag I veg for 60 to 70 days total, three weeks of that are in the 10 before flip, maybe a little less, so from a well rooted one gallon to a 10 those 3 weeks fill the bag. Is that helpful Rob? I guess I think you won't need to flip early for the bag's sake. Refresh me why this may help you? What are you accomplishing?
 
Thirvnrob said:
Well, I have a good bit of information to digest. I’m glad I have the experience that I have. Every bit of it would’ve gone over my head & been overwhelming to me when I first started growing, but I understand a fair amount of it & the rest isn’t so intimidating, with one exception , which I’ll bring to light shortly.

@Azimuth , @Keffka , @InTheShed , @StoneOtter , @Gee64 , @NOOOBIENOT thanks for your input.
I have questions:
I’ve already started my next grow in SIPs. Can I switch to the cloth pots now or should I continue on the SIP path?
I have 10 gallon cloth pots. Should I graduate my seedlings up or can I put them into their final containers? I understand how to properly water them. I kinda miss following @Emilya Green s watering protocol since I’ve been using SIPs.

@StoneOtter if I do go straight to the final pots, should I still flip early? Will the roots fill the bag?

@Keffka what is BSM? You perfectly described what happens around the end of stretch!

@Gee64 these are from seed. I’ve tried cloning thrice, with one success. She was a little show off & gave me 4 zips in a 3 gallon container when I was using synthetic nutes. I googled BRIX - I get the general idea, but do I have to math? Make it easy for me man…
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No math lol. If you monitor your brix regularly it will tell you if the changes you make have a positive or negative effect.

The refractometer will have an indicator line to show your brix reading. If the line is sharp and crisp your calcium is low. If its fuzzy and spread out your calcium is good.

You won't really get the reading to move much until you are into flowering and calcium and phosphorus really start to get consumed.

Its a handy tool for monitoring. It is great for side-by-side comparisons of 2 different soils or feeding regiments.
 
Gee64 said:
No math lol. If you monitor your brix regularly it will tell you if the changes you make have a positive or negative effect.

The refractometer will have an indicator line to show your brix reading. If the line is sharp and crisp your calcium is low. If its fuzzy and spread out your calcium is good.

You won't really get the reading to move much until you are into flowering and calcium and phosphorus really start to get consumed.

Its a handy tool for monitoring. It is great for side-by-side comparisons of 2 different soils or feeding regiments.
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So if I foliar today, how long will it take to realize the effect in a brix reading GEE?
 
StoneOtter said:
So if I foliar today, how long will it take to realize the effect in a brix reading GEE?
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That I am not sure, I despise foliar feeds.

They mislead and confuse the plant.

Also if you want your brix to stay up its better that you train the microlife/fungii to do it. Too much foliar and the plant will see no need for microbes and cut off the exudates. I only feed from below.

That being said, if you can get a rise in brix please share your results.
 
I've always been a bit skeptical of foliar spraying and brix.

"Hey, I sprayed sugar water on my leaves and then measure the leaves with a brix meter and it says there's more sugar, so it must be working." :rolleyes:

That doesn't mean the plant necessarily has a higher brix, it could just be there's more sugar coating the leaves. Now I know that plants can absorb nutrients through their leaves and spraying sugar on them likely does help, but it seems if we want to measure plant health with brix we want to measure the sugar as a by-product of the plant doing its thing to maximum advantage.

I guess what I'm saying is that a high brix reading could be a sign of a really healthy plant, but it also could simply be measuring a superficial coating on the leaves if it was produced by a foliar.

All that said, I don't know much about brix. I did get a meter and plan to get more up to speed on what it can do for my plants.
 
Gee64 said:
No math lol. If you monitor your brix regularly it will tell you if the changes you make have a positive or negative effect.

The refractometer will have an indicator line to show your brix reading. If the line is sharp and crisp your calcium is low. If its fuzzy and spread out your calcium is good.

You won't really get the reading to move much until you are into flowering and calcium and phosphorus really start to get consumed.

Its a handy tool for monitoring. It is great for side-by-side comparisons of 2 different soils or feeding regiments.
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@Gee64 will you explain the process you employ to actually check your brix levels? I.e. what time in the cycle you check them, which leaves you take, what you do with the leaves, etc.
 
Keffka said:
@Gee64 will you explain the process you employ to actually check your brix levels? I.e. what time in the cycle you check them, which leaves you take, what you do with the leaves, etc.
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I take readings from all over the plant but the ones I use are from the newest fully formed leaves and I squeeze the sap from the stalk. If you crush the entire leaf with pliers you can quite often get a higher reading but once you are over 12 brix the plant is safe from bugs so Im not too worried about impressing myself with the highest possible brix I can achieve, only if what I am doing is raising, holding, or lowering brix, so I use the leaf stem as a consistant measuring spot.
 
StoneOtter said:
In a 10 gallon final bag I veg for 60 to 70 days total, three weeks of that are in the 10 before flip, maybe a little less, so from a well rooted one gallon to a 10 those 3 weeks fill the bag. Is that helpful Rob? I guess I think you won't need to flip early for the bag's sake. Refresh me why this may help you? What are you accomplishing?
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Yes, very helpful. I was confused (and high). I shouldn’t post when I’m baked…
 
Gee64 said:
No math lol. If you monitor your brix regularly it will tell you if the changes you make have a positive or negative effect.

The refractometer will have an indicator line to show your brix reading. If the line is sharp and crisp your calcium is low. If its fuzzy and spread out your calcium is good.

You won't really get the reading to move much until you are into flowering and calcium and phosphorus really start to get consumed.

Its a handy tool for monitoring. It is great for side-by-side comparisons of 2 different soils or feeding regiments.
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I know what to do about calcium. What do I do about a phosphorous deficiency?
 
Thirvnrob said:
I know what to do about calcium. What do I do about a phosphorous deficiency?
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The quickest way I know thats organic is something like bat guano. Any guano thats high phos.

You don't want to overdose phos, its more of a slow steady thing. If you topdress with the guano and then add ewc above it to up the microbes right next to it, and water in it will work but not really quick. Then repeat every couple weeks or so.

Are you talking about how to rescue a low phos plant already in need, or about how to stop it from occurring in the 1st place?

Both compost and EWC contain a fair bit of available phosphorus. The best bet with phos is to build it right into your soil.
 
Funny thing about P is, it’s not like a lot of other nutrients. First.. Its presence discourages myco colonization, so you can’t have too much available (available and in the pot are two different things) or myco won’t colonize. You also can’t add too much at one time or it’ll literally scare myco away and they will disappear from your grow*. However, if you don’t have myco colonized in your pot your plant won’t get enough P organically since myco is responsible for providing as much as 50% of a plants total P requirement. Nothing on this earth breaks the P bonds and makes it available like myco does. It’s one of its super specialties. Without it, growers and farmers have to pour so much P into their soils it leeches into rivers and oceans while also critically depleting the stores of it all so the plants can use maybe 5-10% of the amount of P they put down.

The plant itself also isn’t constantly taking in or requesting an equal amount of P. Cannabis likes to build its supply of P up slowly throughout Veg. It bursts near the end of Veg and takes in an extra amount to prepare itself for flower. However, because P is so tightly bound up in the soil, this burst has to be planned for, you can’t just add P when the plant is requesting its elevated levels for flower or you’ll throw the balance off everything and spend the entire bloom phase feeding P by hand comprising quality, yield, and balance. A lot of growers see this burst take place and notice a deficiency anywhere from 2 weeks before flower all the way through stretch. If you see this you know you didn’t have enough or your myco is out of whack.

The best way to provide enough P to the plant is to put it in the pot in the beginning. This is accomplished with balanced sources of P that require both myco and a healthy bacterial environment to breakdown slowly.

If P is a reoccurring issue, it’s best to check your P sources and make sure they’re slow burning as well as make sure your myco is balanced. It is almost always one of these two situations. If it’s not one of these two then something seriously weird is occurring and we would need a lot more info lol

*adding “too much” available P at one time is usually only accomplished through liquids which shouldn’t be used in TLO any way. Chelated synthetic P and organic P chelated with organic acids are two examples of the kinds of P that would be too much and would overwhelm your myco
 
Gee64 said:
The quickest way I know thats organic is something like bat guano. Any guano thats high phos.

You don't want to overdose phos, its more of a slow steady thing. If you topdress with the guano and then add ewc above it to up the microbes right next to it, and water in it will work but not really quick. Then repeat every couple weeks or so.

Are you talking about how to rescue a low phos plant already in need, or about how to stop it from occurring in the 1st place?

Both compost and EWC contain a fair bit of available phosphorus. The best bet with phos is to build it right into your soil.
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I'm definitely talking prevention. I've heard that a top dressing may take a couple weeks to show results. What is EWC?
 
Thirvnrob said:
What is EWC?
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Earth Worm Castings, though I refer to them as RWC (Red Worm castings) because we typically use the red wiggler worm which is a top dwelling, composting worm and found in leaf litter, manure piles,etc., rather than the earth or soil worms that are more deeper soil dwellers.

There are several different worm species that are used, sometimes together in a worm bin. If the bin is deep enough, combining a top dwelling worm with a deeper living one like the Europeam nightcrawlers can be a good strategy.
 
Gee64 said:
If I am rescuing a crashed pot I mix 3 tablespoons into 16 litres of water. If I am just maintaining regularly until the end I use 2 tablespoons for 16 litres. If my brix get stuck around 14, as they sometimes do, I mix 1 tablespoon to 16 litres to just bump it all up a bit. If the leaves are noticably suffering or yellowing I consider it a rescue and go with 3 tablespoons on the 1st feeding. Then drop to 2.
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I wonder if adding molasses water through the reservoir might be the perfect application for bugs. When I was giving my extracts that way they didn't have the effect I wanted which suggested they need microbes to play middle man and they didn't seem to play that big a role delivering them from the bottom so I've switched to top feeding them.

BUT, if what we're after is bug deterrence via the uptake of sugar water into the plant to act as a systemic, maybe feeding it through the reservoir would work great. Might not disrupt the microbes all that much so they'd still play their role in the soil, but the plant would still take up the sugar.

Whatchu think?
 
Thirvnrob said:
Myco drench? Enlighten me please...
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Using a water soluble myco like Great White (not dynomyco, it needs to be a water soluble mycorrhiza).

You mix it in to either pure water or into your next watering and make sure you pour enough on that it soaks the entire medium.

Myco is an absolute requirement for growing organically in containers. If you don’t have it, you’ll struggle every time.
 
Azimuth said:
I wonder if adding molasses water through the reservoir might be the perfect application for bugs. When I was giving my extracts that way they didn't have the effect I wanted which suggested they need microbes to play middle man and they didn't seem to play that big a role delivering them from the bottom so I've switched to top feeding them.

BUT, if what we're after is bug deterrence via the uptake of sugar water into the plant to act as a systemic, maybe feeding it through the reservoir would work great. Might not disrupt the microbes all that much so they'd still play their role in the soil, but the plant would still take up the sugar.

Whatchu think?
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If you do it once to revitalize the microbes then yes, it will work well. If you do it often the microbes will stop taking root exudate bribes in trade for nutes that raise brix, and the microbes will just start eating the regular molasses deliveries. You will create sugar junkies that don't need myco anymore.

Myco actually delivers the exudates to the microbes.

If the microbes are suffering tho, a molasses feed will invigorate them quickly.

If you get them addicted you will have to be their dealer until harvest, but you will definitely achieve harvest.

Your weed will smell and taste differently though, as you will have swayed the plant from its genetic potential. Thats not nescessarily bad, just different, and much better than failure.
 
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