Where's Bluey?

[pug1010]

at last the weather is getting cooler and growing season is under way ... yeehaw!

 

thought other cover crop nerds might like these shots ... have a blueberry shoot just coming up in a 75L pot of a newly mixed soil. the second photo is a bit easier to see her.

 

only one pot this round, so have an extra blumat digital moisture reader handy. decided to measure the moisture level deep in the pot with one reader and for the second one ...  around 4-5cm deep from from the mulch and soil touch. see how it goes.

 

once the cover crop gets going ... will cut and drop and put a fair bit more mulch in the pot to cover the stem of the second blumat reader ... so the water inside doesn't get manky.

 

decided this time around ... to try and do nothing ... will be really tough though, as i do like to do a bit of plucking ... hehehe

 

been missing my christmas trees.

[Spider11]

Hey pug

Good to see you mate

Had to spend 3-4 minutes untill i could finally see her in the second photo.

Looking forward to seeing her grow

 

You are not plucking????

I would like to see that [emoji23]

 

Posted from the OZ Stoners mobile app

[pug1010]

g'day spider ... hehehe

 

gotta be more fun than a storybook eh? although, i have been called a wally on many an occasion.

 

probably showing my age here ... but on a slightly different plucking topic ... hehehe ... used to love watching 'pluck a duck' ... would have that song in my head all week, with a few lyric changes

[itchybromusic]

cool stuff pug , good luck it mate  

 

what did your soil mix end up being amendment wise ?

 

where's the cover crop seed mix from ?

 

how do you decide when to water from the 2 diff meter readings ?

[pug1010]

hey itchy

 

after our chat about the chitin from the cuttlefish outer surface ... i decided to just play it safe. i ended up doing a really simple soil mix mate. unfortunately dng's lobster meal is not quite ready and i still need more info about insect frass, so decided to dodge all marine inputs this go round. the mix and method ended up being ...

 

Base:

20L vermicompost (local fella who uses dairy cow manure composted for a year than runs it throw his worms)

20L perlite (needed to use a light aeration source, as pots will be moved in the future)

20L peat (SPM)

 

___

Method

20L of peat: 12L dry Peat (mixed dry with 1.5 cups eggshells), added 6L water - with 1.5 flat tsp soap nut. mixed overnight and also hydrated peat and after a few hours removed   peat fluffed it and put back in remaining water - alla itchy method
20L of perlite: mixed with 8 cups of Biochar, previously charged in Fulvic/Seaweed/neem water mix for 3 days - threw the 'leftover' charged water into the mix as well.
20L of VC:  first amended with: 1 heaped cup neem, 1 heaped cup kelp, 0.5 cup eggshells and 1 heaped cup of gypsum

 

1. add amended VC to hydrated SPM and mixed thoroughly.
2. added the basalt rock dust and PMB and mixed thoroughly
3. add perlite/biochar and mixed
4. watered to drain with Biodynamic preparation amended Water - took runoff after 20 minutes and watered with it again ... waited 60mins and repeated with less runoff.


Total amendments for 2cuft Mix (around 60L):
1 heaped cup Neem meal (mixture of organic oz and organic indian)
1 heaped cup Kelp (organic australian bull kelp)
2 cups eggshells (local organic/biodynamic)
4 heaped cups MBP (organic malted barley ground down to a flour consistency - think i ended up with pilsner barley from germany, sold in oz:))

1 heaped cup of Gypsum (aust)
8 cups Basalt (aust basalt dust and palagonite)
8 cups Biochar (uncharged australian)

 

As to the cover crops ... took your advice and got a wide variety ... also, after listening to the fella from nts (https://blog.nutri-tech.com.au/cover-crop-secrets-1/), decided to mix in some brassica, cereal, grass, legume and chenopod varieties. got most of the seeds from green harvest ...

bqmulch mix

red clover

amaranth red

fenugreek (of course ... )

buckwheat

oats

(think i might have forgot to put in the oats and maybe the buckwheat though ... will add next cover crop sprinkle)

 

___

watering method

 

trying to get as much data as possible, so i can feel confident enough to simplify the watering system. at the moment, intending to keep the pressure at around 80-100mbar throughout the grow on the entire pot - once it reaches these levels from initial heavy soak. will not water until the deep reader goes into the 80s ... will continue to lightly spray the mulch with around 200-300ml of water when the top layer of mulch just starts to dry out - about every 2-3 days at the moment. am doing this, even if the top reader isn't in the 80s - i have found that this amount of spraying, barely affects the moisture level on the top reader.

 

early days, but at the moment have found since the initial deep soak (about 8 days ago) ... the deep reader has gone from 20 and is sitting on around 40 mbar ... the top reader went from 20 and is now in the high 50s. when the cover crops kick in and really take off in growth, the moisture levels deeper in the pot should start to dry out a bit into a more suitable range.

 

------

side notes:

* found two lovely earthworms trying to escape their wet homes after about 10 days of rain ... they now have a lovely new home.

* found that water gets this amazing silky feel after doing the biodynamic mixing method for around 20 minutes

* not sure how effective it is ... but stuck my milk thermostat in the soil and soil temps seem to sit comfortably at 24 degree regardless of outside temperature - still hot here

* finding that by going up from a 15 to 20gal pot, requires way less maintenance

* found that by cutting a corner of the perlite 20L bag and adding about 2L of water (and shaking heaps to mix), got rid of nearly all perlite dust

[itchybromusic]

that's pretty comprehensive soil mixing detail pug , good stuff  

 

this came up about Brassicas recently , not sure of how much of an issue this is or if it's an issue at all 

 

Vesicular arbuscular mycorrhizal (VAM) fungi colonise the roots of most crop and pasture plants. 

Brassicas, however, are non-hosts and their roots contain glucosinolates (GSLs) that are potentially

hydrolysed in soil to release isothiocyanates (ITCs), which are toxic to some soil fungi.

 

i think Australian Dr Christine Jones , soil ecologist & " more plants the merrier " cover crop promoter mentions

using brassicas somewhere's 

 

​handy watering info pug , definitely bigger pots like 20 , 30 or bigger require less maintenance , for sure 

 

always interested to see how your garden grows  

[pug1010]

hiya itchy:)

 

yeah .. i know what you mean about the brassicas - i remember you mentioned josh steensland had some problems too. last round i used a similar cover crop mix and liked the results ... mind you mate ... fuck me ... never seen so many seeds in my life - reckon i could have gone into hemp seed oil production. this was from a supposed fem seed ... lmao. i'll see if i can find a photo ... reckon you might get a giggle out of it. i decided to keep growing her, just to see what would occur.

 

i got one for you itchy ... have you found that the potency goes down with seedy weed? i ended getting 5 ounces (dry) from the one acapulco gold plant (not including the seeds ... reckon they would have weighed a few more ounces ... hehehe. i wanted to get some kief, so i used four ounces on that and ended up trimming 1 once of heads - very close trim. fuck me ... it is some of the most potent stuff i have grown. reckon next time if it happens, i will just vape all of the (de-seeded) seedy weed - if that makes sense ... .

 

as to the watering ... will see how it goes ... gotta a plan, in any case.

[pug1010]

found a couple ... if you can zoom in a little, you can see the sheer numbers .... hehehe ....

 

was going to enter it in for the best canna pic prize ... might have got the sympathy votes, eh?

 

 

[itchybromusic]

shit happens sometimes mate , it's a bloody piss off though 

i think we've all grown seed that turned out to be hermi seed 

 

once a girl gets preggers mate , it's all down hill after that

 

she will keep doing herself up waiting for a fella , once he's

done the business , it's all about making babies  

 

can't say exactly what is lost putting a girl up the duff but yield is def one of them 

[pug1010]

hehehe ...

 

i'll give the acapulco gold another crack in the future, as she is a lovely daytime smoko - happy, uplifting and even those shitty jobs, start to seem really interesting - they could call it toilet cleaning weed, but probably wouldn't sell as much. also, she was pretty easy to train under 1 metre high, fuck was she stinky though ... actually still is, been curing for a few months now and when the buds get broken apart, leaves that lovely smell around for donkeys.

 

reckon i was at fault in any case for getting her preggers ... the irony is not lost on me either ... i left on a daytime led for a fair while during lights out ... you guessed it ... taking a fucking photo ... lmao. i'm using a warm cmh light during flower that doesn't look real good in photos ... ah well ... hopefully will learn.

 

i don't reckon there are going to be too many flash photos during flower this time round.