We don't test the ppm and ph of run off. It's irrelevant to living soil. We're not using salts (phosphates, nitrates, and phosphoric acid). Amendments are in the soil. The microbes feed on the amendments to make them readily available for uptake. The plant feeds what it wants when it wants., The plant is in control. The microbes keep everything in balance. Everything you know about hydro goes out the window. Get rid of that hydro shop mentality. This is natural farming.
You can test ppm's of ferments when feeding with ferments. It's not even necessary. Plants can handle up to 5,000 ppm's of flower power fruit ferments.
I reamend my soil once or twice a year. So all the nutes in the soil should last at least 6 months..
"The plant feeds what it wants when it wants"
This is always true in any system, even in ones that involve pH, despite what many might imagine reference their ability to talk plant.
In light of the simple reality, it is highly likely none of us even know how the skin cells between our fingers are using the nutrients in our last meal right now, nor do we know for real if the supplemental antioxidants we might consume are having any effect at all, or even if the impacts are good or bad long term, beyond our anecdotes. It is highly unlikely we know what our plants want and when, both in terms of its direct nutrient need and or its symbiosis requirements.
Ergo it can only make sense to try to arrange the things we think today our plants might need, and this is what we all do. Of course plants had a system before we turned up and forced this way or any other and so we are likely more irritating than the presence of sugar in media to a plant
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Molasses plays a huge role in feeding all of us, either in shop brought formats, or in homemade solutions used by small scale farmers all over the world. We and the world need carbohydrates, both simple and complex. Just as we shouldn't live on Snickers bars....so we also shouldnt assume a more complex form of carbohydrate (Chitin or Lignin as examples) does anything more than convert to ATP just as its simpler and more direct relatives do.
Microbes work on different timescales, I fail to understand why there is such a backlash towards sugars!
Plants have been shown to literally round up colonies of yeasts and bacteria, and predate them directly through a process called Rhizophagy. To add to the arguement plants take what they want when they want, It is the plant that will select the make up of its Biome, not you, me, coots, BAS and or molasses
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180917111527.htm
Does anyone know the perfect ratio of fungus to bacteria for cannabis, does this vary based on location, phenotype, environment and more? Plants, like us, only lack a certain number of aminos so I propose it is likely any plant will only recruit microbes its knows that can construct the sub assemblies essential for the building and acquisition of those aminos it is missing, and or the supporting "infrastructure" this including the mechanisms to up regulate it defensive and or reproductive systems etc
if you are "making soil" / "cooking soil" (I also hate this term because we arent really making sand silt clay etc are we?, we are making, or attempting to create humus through forced decomposistion??) then i guess we have to come to terms with chronology and its role in complexity, after we have fully understood what the perfect rate of decomposition cannabis really likes to grow in?
The younger/ more basic the soil, the higher the rates of microbes which grow first and fastest, eg bacteria, and so in turn the higher the pH through the related accumulation of the BioFilms bacteria secrete, as we go through time, so we might add material, (Lignin) which requires different microbes to process, so we might get fungus for example, as these build and begin to take over, the organic acids they secrete lower pH. This process selects for certain biology.
We might add what we think is food or one type or another, but life happens despite of us, not because of us. Just as a plant can select from a diverse portfolio, so can fungus and there is good and bad in this kingdom too, so we might just be growing conditions for other problems by adding more complex forms of carbohydrate.
I note general rules, good root fungus appears to only party with good (in the moment) root bacteria, where bad fungus, eg fusarium, recruit what might be good microbes,and turn them bad by accident of manipulation. So in the case of fusarium, it will recruit pseudomonas fluorescens a common otherwise helpful non plant pathogen/ PSB, but it wont be for the bacteria's ability to mobilize Phosphorous, it will and can however, hijack p.Fluorescens ability to render Hydrogen peroxide via Super Oxide Dismutase, using what we might use as a good antioxidant, to decontaminate anti-fungicides.
Simply for me, we need to have decomposers, but past this we must have the humifiers. Most of us have the decomposing microbes, but we lack the humifiers, we kill these first with bad practice, and so we are are caught trying to feed a whole, uncut chicken to a baby, whose mouth just cant reach around the whole 2kg at once. Rather than accept our role, we can blame molasses