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Fungus Gnats or Something Else?


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I'm suggesting that perhaps living soil could be even more productive with a bit of extra O2 in the roots, might get an extra few % at the end.

 

Nature is pretty harsh on life and 90% of the time things in nature survive rather than thrive. I've always struggled with the mimic nature thing. When we help our plants, we are straying from nature. Even if we are using natrual techniques to do so. The result is an environment that is far superior to anything the plants are likely to encounter in nature. It would be pretty hard to find untoutched soil on this planet that will grow plants as nicely as your carefully prepared live soil, or even a well cared for hydro pot full of quartz gravel.

sorry coop had to step out for a lill bit :)

 

yep i agree if you can get some extra air in there go for it but how do you go about this 

there pros & cons to doing most things 

if you add more scoria to your mix for more air there's less compost , peat , amendments 

 

if you remove the mulch to try & gain more air you loose the benefits of mulching 

 

you can def do both of those things if that suits what your trying to achieve 

there all just tools in your quiver you might never use or something you use all the time 

because it worked for you , there are some wrong things you can do growing plants 

but as you can see people talk with passion about what works for them 

 

in regards to the microbes just surviving & not thriving , it's the survivors we want 

give them good conditions & watch them thrive , well we hope they thrive cos there 

a bit tiny to see unless we invest in a scope & the training to identify them 

 

i'm just into the microbe thing man , they are on us & in us , out weigh our human cells 10 to 1

& some of the "in us" ones are actually in the soil as well , considering we eat food that comes from the ground 

maybe that's how they got there in the first place thousands of years ago  

 

yes if we help plants we stray from nature but we've been putting plants in pots , indoors 

in greenhouses which isn't a natural environment either , it is what it is , may as well try 

to make it as good for the plant as we can so we're hopefully rewarded for our work

& not just with yield but nutrition as well   

 

weird & strange stuff :

example is growing in earthboxes / sip's , if you lift the shower cap on one of those 

& stick your finger in the medium you'll find it sopping wet & it's like that constantly 

if you tried watering that much water through the top you would kill the plant but 

when the water is sub irrigated it's not as big a prob to be that wet & the worms &

soil life go bananas 

 

sorry if i sounded like i dismissed your 02 question cooper , not sure i've answered you but 

i just hope i've made some sense 

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Thanks itchy. I didn't feel dismissd at all. I'm just interested in something that I don't know much about.

 

Yep, I get the microbe abundance thing, everywhere and in everything.  I worked with fish culture for a long time and thats all about ecological balance, quite different to soil though.

 

I need to learn about soil because I want to grow some tomatos. My climate is extremely tropical. I planted 16 tom's in the dirt and within 1 month fusarium had blocked and smashed all but 2, which suffered the same fate within 2 months. If I could push those badies out with beneficials I'd be pretty happy. My soil actually drains very well but never dries.

i'll get back to ya coop 

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Thanks itchy. I didn't feel dismissd at all. I'm just interested in something that I don't know much about.

 

Yep, I get the microbe abundance thing, everywhere and in everything.  I worked with fish culture for a long time and thats all about ecological balance, quite different to soil though.

 

I need to learn about soil because I want to grow some tomatos. My climate is extremely tropical. I planted 16 tom's in the dirt and within 1 month fusarium had blocked and smashed all but 2, which suffered the same fate within 2 months. If I could push those badies out with beneficials I'd be pretty happy. My soil actually drains very well but never dries.

sorry just had to pop away again 

 

some things to try 

use a cover crop / green manure crop as a way of inoculating the patch or bed with beneficals

use the crop as the start of nutrient cycling by chopping the top off & laying them

down on the bed as mulch , at one of those haircuts plant ya tomato seedlings 

 

look into using EM-1 , effective microorganisms as soil drench & foliar

use this because em is acidic at around 3.5ph , fusarium likes a ph around 6.5 

plus the beneficial microbes in em should out compete this fungus 

 

also try using potassium silicate as foliar & soil drench , it's ph is over 10

for the same reason above , fuck with this fungus'sssss environment 

 

anyway that's what i'd try but i've lived in melb all my life so prob not the best

on growing in the tropics 

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