I like to wait and add it to the amendments I am going to add. That reminds me, I need to take a sample for my next cycle.
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Thatās a good point actually to get a quick adjustment based on the test. Iām hoping for deficiencies at worst but Iām bracing for excesses. Fingers crossed.
Now Iām gonna hear his voice in my head every time I open the tent ;p
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Man, I wish I was of more help but water quality stuff is pretty outside my realm. I would suspect though, if your city is adding chlorine/chloramine to the water then it is arriving relatively clean, at least in terms of harboring mold. Itās possible if youāre at the end of the pipe so to speak that the water has no more disinfectant by the time it gets to you but youād want to test for chlorine before making that assumption. My guess is that the stagnant water sits there and mold spores just find their way in from the air and grow a little bit. Unless youāve got gallons of slime coming out of the faucet, I would try to not worry too hard ;p
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Soil arrived at Logan Labs earlier this week, now Iām just waiting on the tests to be completed. Tonight, I wanted to throw something together for the tent but didnāt want to mess with the soil until the tests are back so I opted for a foliar stack. One nice thing about a 2x2 is that 200ml is more than enough to spray everything very well. I went with my go to checklist for making a foliar:
- Pure water (0 tds)
- Bio-activator
- Emulsifier/wetter
- Nutrient load
- Biological inoculant
- Micros/Seawater
I went with low doses of everything as I wanted more variety in the spray.
- 200 ml 0 tds water
- Ful-Power 1 ml, .5 ml fermented cannabis trim/stalks
- Purecrop1 1.5 ml
- .2g protein powder, .2g Ag-Sil, .2g young FAA (2 months)
- .25 ml LABs serum
- Omitted today as Iā¦ forgot and remembered when writing this up. Shiiiiiiiiiit.
Just finished week 2 on the Forum Stomper F2.
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Alrightā¦ the soil tests are in. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed with some crazy high potassium and sodium numbers. pH is also high, likely as a result of oversaturation of the cation exchange sites pushing out all exchangeable hydrogen. Chlorides are also high. This is the first issue Iām going to attack. Iām going to give it some thought and do a bit of reading, but my gut reaction from this report, is to flush the system with either some distilled water or distilled water mixed with some powdered gypsum. Iām likely going to need to water this bed to runoff a few times to relieve these excess salts. The saturated paste levels lead me to think that a lot of the potassium/sodium excesses are in solution already and I might not need the gypsum to force the CEC sites to release. Either way, using distilled should help to suck some of the salts out of the soil and out of the pot.
After a few flushes, Iām going to start addressing the micros, aiming mainly at manganese, copper, zinc, molybdenum and cobalt. Iron is on the low side but Iām reluctant to supplement iron in the soil for a number of reasons. Itās super unfortunate that the boron is doing alright/slightly high as I could use a product like Big 6 to address all the deficiencies in one shot. With boron where it is on both the Mehlich III and saturated paste, I donāt want to risk creating another excess. I donāt plan on running another test after the flushes, so while thereās a chance that I reduce boron with the flushing, I donāt want to start adding a lot of it blind.
It sucks having an excess but itās a lot better knowing why plants like the field pumpkin, and likely the beans that were in here, were struggling. Itās also pretty exciting to know how much potential I have on the table. Thereās a LOT of potential upside to be gained here by bringing down the potassium and sodium and getting those micros in the soil. Luckily the biology is still kicking ass and keeping everything alive. If anyone has experience with this sort of imbalance Iād love to hear from you and your experience.
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For my recordsā¦ just top-dressed about 200g of pelletized gypsum and watered in 2.5 gallons of distilled water. Runoff began around the end of the second gallon. In this sized container, 2.5 gallons of water is equivalent to about 1.9" of water. By volume, itās a bit north of 12%. I opted for the pelletized gypsum as I already had it on hand and really didnāt want to trek across town during the traffic hours. 
State of the tent post flood:
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Hey @grow i had a recent soil test come up high in salts like yours, I was figuring a flush, but could you talk more about the gypsum as a remediation strategy for that?
For sure. In the simplest way of thinking about it, Ca>Mg>K>Na. Thatās the order of cation ābinding strengthā for lack of a better term. Itās also the order of concentrations you want cations in the soil matrix. So if you have an excess of something, you look for a cation that binds more preferentially than whatever is in excess and use it to āpop outā the excess cation and replace it with something that binds more strongly. In my case, since I am pretty low on Ca saturation at 57% or so from the AA8.2 test, Iām figuring that plopping a bunch of calcium should be the most effective way to remove those salts while also bringing up my calcium numbers. I will of course lose some magnesium in the process but it should be to a lesser degree since Na and K bind less strongly. Iām basically guessing my pot weighs about 100 lbs, Every gram of elemental calcium would then bring up the total ppm by about 22. Gypsum is about 22% calcium by weight so 200 grams of gypsum contains about 44g of calcium. Once it is all in the soil matrix, that represents about 970ppm increase which is a decent chunk of an increase. It will also increase the total sulfur, but since the sulfate is also water soluble a good portion of that will flush out the bottom of the pot. I could still manage to add more calcium even if I got the full 970ppm bump, but I think itās a decent start!
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This is some fermented insect frass made from a local bug farmerās product. The amount of solid material was pretty high so I went ahead and refilled the vessel and added a tablespoon of brown sugar to try for a second fermentation. The most bizarre part of this is how much the smell reminds me of a barbecue restaurant. Like the kind of place that has brisket, ribs, and sausage on the menu by the pound. Best guess is the molasses making a contribution. The pH of the liquid was down to about 3.5-4 so I figured it was done enough to separate into its own container. I did not re-inoculate with LABs serum to weāll see what happens with the new one
Meanwhile the tent is still in the process of drying out from the flush. Water meter was reading about 15 mbar when I checked it during the flush. It may have gone a bit lower but thatās the lowest I saw it. Itās pumped up to about 45mbar this morning. Iāve got another 2.5 gallons of distilled ready to go in once the moisture gets around the 100-120mbar zone.
This second flush Iām going to be a bit more diligent with the runoff. Thinking a TDS & EC reading would be nice information to have. I did measure EC of the liquid that had collected in my drip tray but it wasnāt collected as it was coming out of the pot so I know some evaporation and concentration of the salts occurred. What I did measure was extremely high so Iām curious to see what I find on round 2. Also curious what kind of microbes Iāll find in the runoff so Iāll be peeking under the scope as well. Iād guess bacteria and maybe some nematodes but who knows.
Last thought Iāve been having is about the pH. The test shows at 7.6 which is obviously not what I want. Washing out the salts should help, but using something like horticultural sulfur is also an option. The amount needed should be low, only 6 grams or so, so Iām not terribly worried about the fungicidal effects but even still, I could split it to multiple waterings or use a granulated form that breaks down more slowly. Will cross that bridge after the flushing is done, but keep an eye on the pH with some home tests here and there.
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So I looked at the rates indicated for elemental sulfur as a fungicide. Itās about 60g/gallon, or 1.6% by weight. Thatās about 10 times more than I was planning to add in total. I think if I split the 7 grams in half and apply it twice over the course of a month or two the anti-microbial effects should be minimized. I also re-ran the calculations for the rest of the minerals which are set to arrive today. Realized I had an error that wasnāt converting between mg/lb and ppm appropriately. Would have added double what I intended 
Glad I checked.
The plan is to flood again with about 2.5 gallons of distilled. On the final half gallon or so Iāll mix the minerals + sulfur in the tank with some therm-x. Between the mineral amendments and sulfur Iām watering in a total of about 8 grams of material, or about .4% by weight in the half gallon. Pretty lightweight application, but given the soil test, it should help get some of the missing/low ppm minerals into range while lowering the pH over time. It should also help flush some of that gypsum into the soil profile and continue washing away the excess potassium and sodium.
I did some major pruning of a few of the plants and recorded a little video and threw it on the tube 
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Minerals came, and in they went. Surprisingly, after running about 2.7 gallons of water in total, there was barely any runoff. Not even enough to cleanly gather to run my EC meter on. Moisture read 20 mbar a few minutes after I finished.
I was able to slurp a little off the bottom to put on a slide. Really pleased with what I saw. Great bacterial diversity, but more importantly I saw a lot of predators. Tons of flagellates, a few ciliates, some amoebae, a nematode, but best of all, rotifers. In a two drop slide I counted five, and there were at least two different types. One almost looked like a little weird, microscopic shrimp. Makes me want to pick up a book on these to see if I might identify them. The one thing missing was fungal mass but I wouldnāt expect to find that in runoff anyways. You really have to collect soil and shake it loose. Running water through the soil wonāt extract it by itself.
Mineral addition: 3.5g 90% S, 2.5g MnSO4, .6g Cu sulfate, .9g Zn sulfate, .4g Co sulfate, and .2g sodium molybdate.
I added a half Tbsp of Ful-Power plus a dab of purecrop (bless all these sample bottles) to the mineral water to help it out some.
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Dude I must e read that gypsum post like 10 times now and I still canāt follow it all 
Iāll get it though
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Iām sure Iām all over the place- I can try to help if thereās any parts got u hung up
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Been wanting to try this for a bit but didnāt have the biomass. Seeing as Iāve wanted to plant some of the missing families for a while, I figured why not cut back a big chunk of leaves and kill two birds with one stone. Juiced everything I cut and got probably about 150ml of plant juice. Added some no chlorine water, a bit of brown sugar and some LABs serum. The fiber left behind by the juicer makes great mulch of course.
The seeds are soaking in some dilute fulvic acid for a few hours then they can go in the soil. Got 8 missing families plus a bit of redundancy on some that are already growing. If Iām being honest, I have no idea how Iām gonna fit these into the bed, but even if only 1 or 2 new families are introduced Iāll consider it worthwhile.
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So, there are some burned looking tips on some of the leaves. Not worried too hard on it yet as I did make a lot of changes to the soil all at once. I think overall it looks pretty good in there. Tomorrow morning the pot will probably get a gallon of plain water before we leave for the rest of the weekend.
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Sprouts! Cut back some plants so the new guys could get some light. Forum Stomper starting to stretch. Yellow tips seemed to stop progressing so Iām hoping sheās adjusting to all the changes.
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First picture of the forbidden ramen is from the sprouted quinoa ferment. Havenāt put that one to use, but maybe the seedlings could enjoy a taste.
Garden is really starting to turn the corner. Itās gotten a pretty continuous buffet of ferments over the past few weeks, but this latest horseweed ferment is something else.
I was near an empty lot in the neighborhood. The bare dirt looked like it had been baked for decades. It was rock hard, sun baked clay. Out of this slab of dirt are growing these ridiculously vibrant green horseweed plants, aka Erigeron canadensis. They stood straight up, every leaf down to the base was bright green, and there was barely a trace of any insect damage. This is the kind of thing I had been hoping to find for a while. But they werenāt quite ready to harvest.
Fast forward a few weeks and I drive past them to check on their progress and they have an incredible amount of blooms with a ton of branches.
So yeah, I chopped a bunch of the branched tops off these plants, packed em into a five gallon bucket and let them ferment about 8 days at outdoor temps using a cup of molasses, some milk LABs, malted barley powder LABs, and EM-1. It still feels risky for some reason, the first time using a new ferment, but Iām pleasantly surprised every time. Today it felt like everything was giving a little extra. Everything was perky, a little bit greener, a little happier. Really happy with this batch, and especially happy to have three or so gallons of it!
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