Carbons No-Till Try Out

[itchybromusic]

they looking ok mate 

 

if you have , top dress a

sprinkle of kelp , neem , some minerals / rock dust & malted barley powder

cover with castings / compost / more soil mix & mulch over the top to retain moisture

 

water in with aloe silica & fulvic but do it when she needs a drink next , don't over water 

just to get the top dress on 

 

you don't look like you have a mass of space at the top of the pots so fit in what you can 

& keep any of the wet part of the top dress like castings off the main stem , at this stage they'd

prob just spit more roots out of the stem into the top dress if hard up against the stem but could

also go the other way with problems like stem rot , i don't think this is an issue running an organic 

type system but better be safe than sorry & keep it off the stem 

[Carbcon]

Will do, cheers.

[Carbcon]

Quick update on a lil experiment I did recently and didn't take a pic until today.

 

Planted 4x Mexican sunflowers in Scott's seed raising mix.

 

4x with 25% worm castings

 

4x with castings and a mix of neem\kelp\mbp.

 

 

Culled all the ones in just Scott's recently as they were maybe a third smaller than the mix with castings and I needed the soil and the pots and transplanted 2x of the neem\kelp\mbp already.

 

Pic shows 4x Scott's and castings and 2x Scott's\castings and amendment mix.

 

I realise it's just seed raising mix but interesting all the same.

 

They have really taken off the last few days but the castings were always ahead of base mix being maybe 20% bigger and better colour.

 

Amended mix again always ahead of just the castings by maybe a third but as I said, last few days they went mental.

 

In the same spot. Just water used.

[itchybromusic]

feed your almost done compost to the worm farm for superior castings 

 

http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Worm_castings_vs._compost/

 

Despite the higher NPK values of compost ,worm castings have a huge positive effect on

plant growth. When up to 20% of the soil consists of worm castings, plants germinate better,

grow faster, and produce higher yields

 

Why?

The answer is that worm castings are biologically and chemically different from compost or soil. 

Worm castings have much higher percentages of humus than either soil or compost, which helps

the castings hold more water and stay aerated, while also providing binding sites for micronutrients 

that would otherwise wash out of soil during heavy rains.  The castings are also chock full of plant

growth promoters like cytokinins and auxins, along with increased levels of micronutrients like

calcium, magnesium, and sulfur.  Worm castings also host ten to twenty times as much microorganism

activity as plain soil.

[Carbcon]

An update is in order.

 

With regard to the worm situation.

It was slow to begin with but I'm very happy with both farms now. One a Reln 3 storey, the other a home made storage container.

Coco base. They were fed a bit of everything.

 

I have given a sprinkle of Neem, kelp, mbp every so often along with a sprinkle of lime too.

Have added seabird guano, rock minerals and lightly add some soil when I think it needs it too.

 

Now I have settled into giving them mainly a large amount of comfrey leaves, borage leaves and flowers, sunflowers, clover when I chop it and there is heaps, tomatoes fruits and plants, leaves, stalks, the lot.

 

Sometimes fresh, sometimes leave them to wilt a while in the sun.

I cut it up a fair bit before I add.

 

I have an outside compost container that also gets fresh organic matter and sometimes add the half decayed stuff to the wormbin. This mainly gets tomato plant matter but has a horse shit base. (Clean shit, horse not wormed and eating same Lucerne I mainly mulch with).

 

So I'm starting to see the clumps of worms like you expect to see.

The stuff breaks down fast.

 

I don't water much it seems, average maybe once every 10 days. Don't want them heading for the top of the bin and start fucking off.....again.

 

Always seems moist, lot of water in the leaves I suppose. The stalks of borage at the ends of the leaves are almost like celery. Have some dandelion seeds I must start too and look at another input I can grow for them but I'm really happy how they are going now.

 

 

Comfrey wise, I have been using symphytum officiale, had 3x and just took root cuttings from one to make 25x more. Have 7-8 just coming up now. Have also 10x from seed sprouted recently.

Never did root cuttings before, pretty neat to see them all coming up.

 

Got the superstar comfrey, Bocking 14 that I got 2 of recently, plan to grow them a bit bigger and take root cuttings from one.

This is the daddy comfrey, supposed to grow 66% faster than common comfrey (s.o), 40 t an acre, beat potash etc.

 

I planted them into 20l pots with my bestest soil mix. (9 month aged itchy mix), threw some crimson clover in and they are going good.

 

All comfrey still in pots.

 

Heavy insect pressure here, am loving seeing all the beneficials the attractors are attracting. Have started some dill, mammoth and regular, coriander, regular and slow bolt and chervil to help out the others.

 

Lots more to say and ask but post this before something crashes.

[itchybromusic]

ya kicking arse 

 

my understanding with bocking 14 is , in the ground once you have a dig at the roots 

the plant go's bananas & pops up new growth everywhere 

 

some of the best castings come from feeding not quite finished compost to the worm farm 

 

the other thing with compost bins , best management of them is to fill them & leave them 

not keep adding to them & restarting the compost process each time , this way the compost

will finish a lill sooner rather than latter but no probs adding to a bin until it's full then letting it sit 

 

biodynamic guys will also tell you compost piles need to be at least 1m squared & turned once  

that is thermal composting , most backyard compost bins are usually cold composting which does 

pretty much the same thing just takes a lill longer 

 

that all sounds very cool mate , oh for in ground maybe look into some root veg as well , something you don't harvest 

all of what you planted , chopping tops off & leaving the rest to breakdown under ground , daikon radish is a big bugger 

it's just a bit more nutrient cycling & attracting worms to ya grow plot 

[Carbcon]

Thanks Itchy.

 

Yep Bocking 14 sterile but will root divide, s.o. will seed and root divide.

 

There was a coke can size ball of root right under with multiple root shoots off it.

 

Cut 20-25mm length sections or between 4-5mm up to 9-12mm diameter, into 600ml pots of some average stuff. Amended bagged stuff, cycled and reamended, kelp and Neem. Probably 50ml/1\4 cup per 60l.

 

Mostly all coming up now.

 

Ya, any soil cultivation with these will effectively shred the lot and it goes crazy.

 

My plan is to divide a Bocking and transplant the other to a big daddy 85l pot.

Want to do the same with the best so too. Keeper plant of each variety in a big pot, they would produce then.

 

Comfrey takes a lot of water, esp in small pots. Have never seen it over watered and amazed how dry for how long it has to get before it will wilt.

 

I had read about 1 or 2 harvests a year, I have been cutting 3x for 4-6 months now, sometimes right back to nothing, cut all foliage. Have done this 2-3 times and every week or two, pick lower leaves depending how the worms are going.

 

I should have the comfrey sorted now, hoping for a plentiful supply whenever I want it. Bigger worm farm on the cards down the line.

 

The S.o. has a more slender and longer leaf than the Bocking 14, almost like an indica/sativa in appearance with the 14 a bit fatter.

 

The recovery by the plant after cutting the shit outta its roots was pretty good too. I chopped the smallest one, it's in a 13l pot, stuck it right back into same pot with same soil and it barely blinked, went hard as anything I reckon.

 

Yep, the compost pile I was talking about is small, kinda started as a place I threw stuff to dry out and forgot about it.

Makes sense to let it finish, even if I did fill it yesterday with fresh stuff.

I will forget about it again. (20l container).

 

I do have another pile I made maybe a year ago. Maybe 2-3 M2.

Turned at 6months and again recently and currently splayed out getting much needed rain.

Lot of leaves, sawdust, topsoil, horse shit, when it wasn't covered and I let it grow I got a lot of tomatoes and Boston pickles come up as they were added.

 

Dug them in and recovered.

 

Got so dry recently I took cover off and mixed but was real dry but good breakdown, I had layers of leaves, small twigs, general green waste etc. It was added to recently but only a small amount but ya I should cut that out for sure.

 

Daikin radish, fuck.

I planted a heap of them and they went ok, along with french and a radish mix. Good leaf production, and radishes developing but they got decimated by caterpillars. I had been away for a week and they were completely fucked when I got back.

 

They are all greenery so I chopped up half of them for the worms, the others re begged and got a bit bigger, they were given to the worms too.

 

I let one go to seed, almost finished now, so the worms will get one more taste.

I thought they were bitter,maybe not enough water.

 

I forgot to mention this, the worms got a fair few radishes a few months back.

I have given them Lucerne hay too, finely chopped.

 

I usually will now just mix some with a helping of fresh greens.

 

I will try to get some pics

[Carbcon]

Comfrey root cuttings, maybe 3 weeks since planted.

 

Boking 14 on left.

 

2 week old Mephisto Ripley's S1. Made and gifted to me by a master cultivator.

 

This soil has been used already.

[Carbcon]

Bit tired to type.

Explain all the pics later.

 

Comments very welcome, picked a cross section of pics

[SOOTY]

Everything looks extremely healthy. Nice