zeddd
Well-Known Member
lol this was the geeza who got raided for an indoor grow, found no mj just veg crops, lol he was mad about it lmao
DonBrennons 'Unconventional' organic gardens
- Thread starter DonBrennon
- Start date
Kidbruv
Well-Known Member
This has been a fascinating thread to read through. Bravo and please keep it coming.
I'm glad I stumbled across this, because just the other day I also stumbled across the Unconventional Farmer's site. I'm planning to make a fermented fruit bloom fertilizer for the upcoming flowering phase of my outdoor grow and I'd love to pick your brain a bit Don.
1. Have you found success with his bloom fertilizer recipe?
2. Do you recommend other recipes during transition and flowering?
3. I'm thinking that a good way to make it is to put all the fruit through myu juicer first, get some deelish juice out of it, and use the pulp for the fert. I'm thinking the greater surface area should really help the process along.
4. Could you recommend a fruit/ingredient list that you've found success with?
5. Any other thoughts and/or tips on this and other recipes I might find helpful would be super appreciated.
I'll post a pic of my one solo girl taken this morning. My grow is for fun and learning. I'm a pretty dedicated gardener and figured I'd try one plant this year. She got a fairly late start but seems uber healthy and is growing quick.
Cheers!
I'm glad I stumbled across this, because just the other day I also stumbled across the Unconventional Farmer's site. I'm planning to make a fermented fruit bloom fertilizer for the upcoming flowering phase of my outdoor grow and I'd love to pick your brain a bit Don.
1. Have you found success with his bloom fertilizer recipe?
2. Do you recommend other recipes during transition and flowering?
3. I'm thinking that a good way to make it is to put all the fruit through myu juicer first, get some deelish juice out of it, and use the pulp for the fert. I'm thinking the greater surface area should really help the process along.
4. Could you recommend a fruit/ingredient list that you've found success with?
5. Any other thoughts and/or tips on this and other recipes I might find helpful would be super appreciated.
I'll post a pic of my one solo girl taken this morning. My grow is for fun and learning. I'm a pretty dedicated gardener and figured I'd try one plant this year. She got a fairly late start but seems uber healthy and is growing quick.
Cheers!
DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
Glad you like the thread and I'm happy to answer any questions, although, I do still see myself as new to organics and have only ever actually made one FFJ (bloom fertilizer).
1. I can't give you a definitive yes or no to this question because I haven't done a side by side. I do know that my plants 'pray' and respond very well to it after receiving a root drench and any plants that I've finished since using it have great bud formation and flavour, this could also be down to my soil getting better though.
2. I would just start using the FFJ when you switch to 12-12. 'TUF' has a recipe for cal-phos and recommends using this at transition and towards the end of flowering. I've made the cal-phos and used it on one run without really noticing any improvements, then I used it on a second run and killed a full tent of plants with it, using it as a foliar, just burned all my leaves up.........DON'T Foliar with homemade cal-phos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
3. You really want ALL of the fruit to go in..............you would be removing most of the beneficial vitamins, compounds, PGR's and natural sugars with the juicing, use that pulp for your worm bins.
4. Like I said earlier, I've only made it once, but I made a 5 liter batch up and I really do believe it's good shit, I've got less than a liter left, so I'm gonna have to get my fermenting shit out soon and start again. I can't actually remember the full list of ingredients, but it went something like this - Mango, Banana, carrot, beetroot, apple and dandelion flowers all fermented separately, then mixed together. The comments section under the recipe on TUF has some good discussion on ingredients and why some of them are used, also look at the FLOG on the same website.
5. 'Good' compost, good wormcastings, good amendments...................probably over any recipes or 'fertilizers'. Get a living soil tuned in, look after that soils health and the plants then actually grow themselves.......which they do anyway, but you know what I mean.
Beautiful plant too, looking nice and healthy, what is she?
Kidbruv
Well-Known Member
Thanks Don. Appreciate the long answer to my long questions. Couple things (will prob also be long)...
On the juicer: you're absolutely right and I thought of that afterwards. It's obvious on second thought that the juice is so healthy because you are extracting so much of the goodness that the plant would appreciate. So I won't be doing that. But I now have a craving for some juice so I'll get extra fruits.
On transition: I'm outdoors so I won't be going to 12-12 but your point stands. I may try a cal-phos supplement soon as I think she's about to switch over any day. Interesting point about the 12-12 thing now that I think of it... If my plant switches to flower in say 5 days (which I think is realistic), the amount of daylight based on sunrise and sunset times will be exactly 14.5 hours. And even more when you figure that pre-sunrise and post-sunset light is still strong enough to inhibit flowering. This means that I expect it to flower when it is still getting about 15 hours light and only 9 hours dark. this means that indoor growers seem to be cutting off light unecessarily. Why don't people go 14-10 instead of 12-12? Curious.
On ingredients: I couldn't find any discussion of it on TUF, but why not coconut? It seems a logical choice for a bloom fert since its high in K, right? The calcium in it prob wouldn't hurt either though I don't know what effect if any the fermentation would have on it.
On soil: agreed 100% on feeding the soil. That's where this grow has been so valuable. I've learned a TONNE about organic the right way. I'm currently brewing my third ACT and have been using castings, myc, blood meal, other composts etc throughout this grow. My days of chem use are overrrr.
On my girl: I have a friend that could get me clones. He didn't come through. It was late may and I happened to find out another friend could get them. I was feeling the clock by this point and asked him for four of them. Plan was to only grow one and I would at least have three clones from which to select the strongest/healthiest.
He got me the clones from his buddy but had no idea what strain they were. I was pretty confident that it was an indica but that's it. I asked him to ask again about specific genetics but all I could get out of him was that it's a Kush.
Very quickly I realised that I couldn't just let the other 3 plants die, so I found adoptive homes with the friends and I feel great that they are all still healthy and should produce SOMETHING at least.
You're right though...she is a looker. I very quickly gave up my wishful 1-2lb yield hopes and decided to focus on health and quality. I'm not a heavy smoker anyways and really, what did I expect on my first grow in over 15 years in a container with unknown genetics.
It's been a fun summer of learning and growing and I'll be sure to let you know how my bloom fertz and everything else turn out.
Cheers and thx again.
On the juicer: you're absolutely right and I thought of that afterwards. It's obvious on second thought that the juice is so healthy because you are extracting so much of the goodness that the plant would appreciate. So I won't be doing that. But I now have a craving for some juice so I'll get extra fruits.
On transition: I'm outdoors so I won't be going to 12-12 but your point stands. I may try a cal-phos supplement soon as I think she's about to switch over any day. Interesting point about the 12-12 thing now that I think of it... If my plant switches to flower in say 5 days (which I think is realistic), the amount of daylight based on sunrise and sunset times will be exactly 14.5 hours. And even more when you figure that pre-sunrise and post-sunset light is still strong enough to inhibit flowering. This means that I expect it to flower when it is still getting about 15 hours light and only 9 hours dark. this means that indoor growers seem to be cutting off light unecessarily. Why don't people go 14-10 instead of 12-12? Curious.
On ingredients: I couldn't find any discussion of it on TUF, but why not coconut? It seems a logical choice for a bloom fert since its high in K, right? The calcium in it prob wouldn't hurt either though I don't know what effect if any the fermentation would have on it.
On soil: agreed 100% on feeding the soil. That's where this grow has been so valuable. I've learned a TONNE about organic the right way. I'm currently brewing my third ACT and have been using castings, myc, blood meal, other composts etc throughout this grow. My days of chem use are overrrr.
On my girl: I have a friend that could get me clones. He didn't come through. It was late may and I happened to find out another friend could get them. I was feeling the clock by this point and asked him for four of them. Plan was to only grow one and I would at least have three clones from which to select the strongest/healthiest.
He got me the clones from his buddy but had no idea what strain they were. I was pretty confident that it was an indica but that's it. I asked him to ask again about specific genetics but all I could get out of him was that it's a Kush.
Very quickly I realised that I couldn't just let the other 3 plants die, so I found adoptive homes with the friends and I feel great that they are all still healthy and should produce SOMETHING at least.
You're right though...she is a looker. I very quickly gave up my wishful 1-2lb yield hopes and decided to focus on health and quality. I'm not a heavy smoker anyways and really, what did I expect on my first grow in over 15 years in a container with unknown genetics.
It's been a fun summer of learning and growing and I'll be sure to let you know how my bloom fertz and everything else turn out.
Cheers and thx again.
Kidbruv
Well-Known Member
I mixed up my fermented fruit bloom fertilizer tonight using fruit I got at the discount shelf of the grocery store and some from my garden. I am now impatiently waiting for a week or two for it to ferment so figured I'd kill some of that time by posting my recipe here...
I used the following fruit in varying amounts:
-canteloupe
-pineapple
-bananas
-pomegranates
-coconut
-ground cherries
-papaya
I did some research on the nutrient in the above fruits and I think I've got a lot of P and K heavy stuff there. Surprisingly, ground cherries are one of the best sources of phosphorous in any fruit and I've got lots of them growing in my garden!
I blended it and mashed it all up with brown sugar and molasses (used less sugar than the 1:1 ratio of sugar to fruit recommended on TUF site - more like 1-2)
I've now got about 4L of puke-like sludge sitting on a dark shelf in the garage in a plastic jug with the lid sitting loosely on top.
I'd like to get an analysis of it done for NPK, Calcium, Magnesium, and PH. Hoping my chemistry prof aunt will help with that, but if not, anyone have recommendations on a lab to do this?
Thanks
I used the following fruit in varying amounts:
-canteloupe
-pineapple
-bananas
-pomegranates
-coconut
-ground cherries
-papaya
I did some research on the nutrient in the above fruits and I think I've got a lot of P and K heavy stuff there. Surprisingly, ground cherries are one of the best sources of phosphorous in any fruit and I've got lots of them growing in my garden!
I blended it and mashed it all up with brown sugar and molasses (used less sugar than the 1:1 ratio of sugar to fruit recommended on TUF site - more like 1-2)
I've now got about 4L of puke-like sludge sitting on a dark shelf in the garage in a plastic jug with the lid sitting loosely on top.
I'd like to get an analysis of it done for NPK, Calcium, Magnesium, and PH. Hoping my chemistry prof aunt will help with that, but if not, anyone have recommendations on a lab to do this?
Thanks
MustangStudFarm
Well-Known Member
That stuff would be great in a worm bin!!! Between my rabbits, chickens, and worms nothing gets wasted anymore! I just turn around and use their manure in a compost pile.
DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
I can't buy frozen food anymore coz my tiny freezer's full of worm food, pmsl, prob not a bad thing, but I do sometimes think that my dog, worms and plants all eat better than me.
MustangStudFarm
Well-Known Member
Yeah, we feed my rabbits cabbage often because it is the cheapest. We also feed them kale and anyother leafy green scraps. The worms dont get it directly but rather from the ass of my rabbits lol. The worm bin still gets the stuff that the rabbits dont eat.
We have been trying to find local farmer's markets and so far the first 2 have been a bust pretty much. One was a peach farm, but the shit was not good. The 2nd only had raspberries, which are native to our area and you can find them in the woods!!! I have native pecan, mulberry, and raspberry as far I know. There is a cherry blossom tree that does not fruit, but the bees seem to love them. I have a HEALTY bee population here now. I stopped spraying my yard because I compost it now, and the chickens really seem to keep the bugs out of the yard. Anyways, there was a swarm of bees on my lawn the last time that I mowed. I almost felt bad for cutting my grass!
Kidbruv
Well-Known Member
Looks like I may have found my answer and it's really fascinating. It has to do with how plants react to the far red spectrum of light which occurs outside, but not in a grow room. I will quote a post here from 'Dogsnova' on the 420 Magazine forums from 2010. It does make me wonder though how the artificial light pollution here in the city will affect my plant's flowering response:
"Red light (620nm and higher) is SLOWER then SID (Standard Indoor Darkness). However only 15min of red light at a time will not slow your girls down that much (if at all). But if you have red light on more then 15min at a time during your flowering dark time you will notice a slow down in flowering time.. i.e. It will start to add days to your flowering time.. But they will not re-veg..
Far red (730nm and higher) on the other hand can be found in SOD (Standard Outdoor Darkness) every night all night long.. Outdoor darkness is faster then indoor darkness because of the Far Red spectrum (730nm and higher) that exist outdoors at night.. Far Red is one of mother natures tricks. She speeds up the darkness outdoors witch allows more daylight to be used.. i.e. Most girls (indica and sativa) grown outdoors will be in full bloom using aprox 13hrs of daylight.. As a mater of fact my indica strain will be in full bloom outdoors under a 13.5/10.5 flowering schedule.. If I try that 13.5/10.5 schedule indoors without a far red spectrum on during my dark time my indica girls will not flower.."
calliandra
Well-Known Member
Ohwow yeah really interesting!
While I don't get what he's saying with slow and fast light/darkness (WTF?! lol), it makes sense that during the dark hours outdoors, there's still some kind of light...especially outside the visible spectrum... I get this uneasy feeling that this topic is quite a rabbit hole haha!
Kidbruv
Well-Known Member
I share your WTF wholeheartedly and agree that this is probably worth its own thread. I'm going to see what else I can dig up on it first though. Will report back!Ohwow yeah really interesting!
While I don't get what he's saying with slow and fast light/darkness (WTF?! lol), it makes sense that during the dark hours outdoors, there's still some kind of light...especially outside the visible spectrum... I get this uneasy feeling that this topic is quite a rabbit hole haha!
Edit to add an apology to Don Brennon for taking over his thread with off-topic material. I'll start a new one in the General forum if more to say on this far-red spectrum topic.
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DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
No worries pal, it's weird you posted this really, because I've been building some lights and have just added some mono's to them, to try to emulate some of the effects listed with different colours
these (16 deep red, 8 bright red, 8 royal blue, 8 violet and 8 UV per light)mono's are gonna run all the time my lights are on, but I've also got some 740nm far red, to build a separate light for the sundown effect so I can run 13-11 in flower. I read a similar article to the one you linked somewhere today, I'll try and find it and post a link.
Kidbruv
Well-Known Member
Next time someone rags on me for how obsessive I am about plants and gardening, I'll tell them about this guy Don who built light panels with specific ratios of different coloured lights to ensure his plants receive optimal light spectra - even in the mothafuckin' dark.
Love it when people realise that anything worth doing is worth doing right.
Amazing.
DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
I've got to admit, I have become a little obsessed with my growing again, but it is my only real hobby nowadays. I used to be in an indie rock band and that used to take up all of my time and a lot of money(we never gigged often enough to make it profitable, we all work in construction, I was also growing for profit at the time, but that's changed too). But I was never really into gigging, I just loved getting off my nut and making music with my mates and at 41 I'm too old for all that shit now, the recovery takes too long. I prefer a quiet cup of coffee or glass of wine with a big fat spliff these days.
Btw.........The spectrum of my lights aren't that specific, it's really hard to find a consensus on what is best to add to cob led's to produce the best results. I think there is growing agreement among users of supplementary mono's that they are an improvement on cobs on their own, I've also read a report recently stating mixing cob spectrum's' improves result over using a single spectrum set up. Which does make me feel like I've done the right thing by adding the mono's, cos my cobs are all 3500k. I'm also glad I added the 5000k strip leds to the 3000k cobs on the prototype light, from what I've read, the blue is what increases terps', flavour, trichome production.
calliandra
Well-Known Member
Ohno! lol
My all-3500k COBs just got delivered yesterday lmao (though admittedly, I was already thinking of tweaking them sooner or later)
Interesting about the function of blue light. My current cheap-chinese COBs are "6000-6500k" (x2) plus 1 "3000-3500k". While everything is growing, I know there's something missing by looks of the calendula's flowers.
Side by side looks - in the closet and in the garden outdoors:
So I was thinking this is probably happening because I have too much of the blue spectrum / not enough reds, and was also putting the slow development of the fruity terpenes down to this imbalance... just when I thought I was starting to get a grip on this light thing, turns out I'm all wrong after all?
Or does "blue" just mean UV?Oh and your lights are looking absolutely amazing! Do you know the nm-values of those different reds and blues?
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calliandra
Well-Known Member
Oh btw I found a page that explains how the red/far red light affects flowering - in a way even I could understand it 
It's pretty cool!
http://www.biology-pages.info/P/Photoperiodism.html
Makes me wonder about such practices as supplementing IR to emulate sundown --> actually, it's converting those Phytochromes back from being far red receptors to red receptors, leading to the production of the flowering hormone florigen. So we're getting better harvests when supplementing IR because fresh florigen gets sent to the apices over and over?
It's pretty cool!http://www.biology-pages.info/P/Photoperiodism.html
Makes me wonder about such practices as supplementing IR to emulate sundown --> actually, it's converting those Phytochromes back from being far red receptors to red receptors, leading to the production of the flowering hormone florigen. So we're getting better harvests when supplementing IR because fresh florigen gets sent to the apices over and over?
Kidbruv
Well-Known Member
Well thanks a whole lot Calliandra.
You've got me up way past bedtime reading about damn phytochromes and florigen.
I don't know if hitting the plants repeatedly with UV would have that effect since (I don't know yet but will soon enough!) I imagine the florigen once released takes time to have an effect. And I also don't know if the florigen has a cumulative/additive effect as you suggest.
What does seem pretty cool for my purposes is that it seems that the far red light can have a corrective effect for those times you realise the plant has received light when it shouldn't. I'd like to see actual study results on this. For my outdoor city garden, it would be nice to be able to give it a flash of far-red every night before heading to bed since we're often up and about within sight of the plant and though I'm pretty careful, I'm sure some of the light from our evening activities occasionally falls on her.
Rather than going out and buying a 730nm LED, does anyone know if it's possible to simply gel a regular light such as my headlamp in order to produce far-red? I'm guessing that the 730nm+ spectrum may not even be contained in a light like that, but I'll need to do some more reading.
...damn you and your thought provoking posts Calliandra
You've got me up way past bedtime reading about damn phytochromes and florigen.
I don't know if hitting the plants repeatedly with UV would have that effect since (I don't know yet but will soon enough!) I imagine the florigen once released takes time to have an effect. And I also don't know if the florigen has a cumulative/additive effect as you suggest.
What does seem pretty cool for my purposes is that it seems that the far red light can have a corrective effect for those times you realise the plant has received light when it shouldn't. I'd like to see actual study results on this. For my outdoor city garden, it would be nice to be able to give it a flash of far-red every night before heading to bed since we're often up and about within sight of the plant and though I'm pretty careful, I'm sure some of the light from our evening activities occasionally falls on her.
Rather than going out and buying a 730nm LED, does anyone know if it's possible to simply gel a regular light such as my headlamp in order to produce far-red? I'm guessing that the 730nm+ spectrum may not even be contained in a light like that, but I'll need to do some more reading.
...damn you and your thought provoking posts Calliandra
calliandra
Well-Known Member
LMAO sorry
-- but in turn, you've put an old King Crimson tune into my head which will probably stay there all day "...Confusion - will be my epitaph..." LOL except they weren't so optimistic about the outcome buahaha
Yeah the florigen, I need to look into that more too -- in the context of the gas lantern routine I had read that flowering begins much more quickly after the switch, the explanation was that the flowering hormone accumulates more than when running 18/6 first, and thus flowering can begin faster. So there are hints, but I'd like a full picture!
As for IR in common-use lights, I don't think so, their main aim being to provide visible lights for our eyes. According to that guy you quoted, outdoor night should provide the far red of itself anyways? I must say however, I couldn't find a thing on night time spectra - perhaps I just didn't feed google with the right keywords tho haha
Sweet dreams to you!
DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
Mystery plants.............misplaced whilst looking for roots, intoxicated, at seedling stage, me, not the plants. This is when I potted up and over-watered 11 days ago
The list of seeds I popped at the time are
Mystery bodhi
Clusterfunk
Fat purple
Afghan haze Bastards
Wild thai
Pakistan valley
I was hoping they'd all be out of the 1st 3, but the one back left looks like a sativa and if she is, she'll have to be severely pruned and bondaged during stretch.
Here they are now, not been watered since and soil seems to be drying now, I think the growth will start to explode now and I'm expecting to flip in a week or so. These are gonna be water only with the occasional AACT, OHN or FFJ.
The list of seeds I popped at the time are
Mystery bodhi
Clusterfunk
Fat purple
Afghan haze Bastards
Wild thai
Pakistan valley
I was hoping they'd all be out of the 1st 3, but the one back left looks like a sativa and if she is, she'll have to be severely pruned and bondaged during stretch.
Here they are now, not been watered since and soil seems to be drying now, I think the growth will start to explode now and I'm expecting to flip in a week or so. These are gonna be water only with the occasional AACT, OHN or FFJ.
DonBrennon
Well-Known Member
Flower tent's starting to look good again, although I am more used to a mono culture and I'm struggling with high temps around the tops of the 2 sativa's
Wild Thai with a good distance to go, nice strong smells and looks like a good yielder
Afghan haze bastard.......looks more sativa than the landrace thai?, better trich developement and a monster stretch, this is gonna take a long time to finish, just hope the high temps aren't causing too much harm
One of 3 mystery Bodhi's, all seem to be stunning indica dom hybrids, I'm starting to believe the hype already
Wild Thai with a good distance to go, nice strong smells and looks like a good yielder
Afghan haze bastard.......looks more sativa than the landrace thai?, better trich developement and a monster stretch, this is gonna take a long time to finish, just hope the high temps aren't causing too much harm
One of 3 mystery Bodhi's, all seem to be stunning indica dom hybrids, I'm starting to believe the hype already