Long time grower from central Illinois . The native soil in Illinois is arguably the best soil in the world. Well at least in central Illinois !! Good luck with your soil build . Don’t hesitate to use native soil to your mix ! Peace
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Totally! I sifted a ton of native. My go to was moving a log and grabbing the goodness underneath
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Plant update
3 Mother’s hashplant waiting to show sex
Hashplant D (indoor of this went into the bucket today)
Space monkey
Orange cream pop hsc
Lime overload x ocp- an accidental cross I made that I used to test out my soil mix. It survived and I put it next to the ssdd when it didn’t look like any were going to pop
Decided to mow the wildflower patch to see what comes up next. Here’s the last pic before the chop tomorrow
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Very nice ! It’s great not having to sneak around in the dark to grow he,he,he, now that it’s legal. Looks like you’ve got plenty of light too. Any direct light over 10 hours a day will increase your yield, and they will mature a week or two sooner ! Peace
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Totally agree. I’m one of the luckiest people in the world, but still hade some limitations on where I could grow cannabis(wildflower patch would have been a much better place) I have full sun after about 9:30 AM right now, which is a limiting factor for sure. Future plans are to take out the section of trees blocking sun and have open light all the way to the lake with a permaculture garden running from the shore to the weed patch.
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Good luck with your crops. The place is fantastic!
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Compost tea (aka act,aact,worm tea)
Any dive into compost teas will bring you to the soil food web which can’t be properly discussed without mentioning Dr. Elaine Ingham. Ingham has a ton of great lectures on YouTube. The quick premise of the soil food web is that microbes, protozoa, micro arthropods, fungi, bacteria, insects, animals etc all have integral roles in creating a proper soil. Compost teas are born from the idea that with enough microbes reacting to exudates in an organic environment, fertility should be a naturally occurring next step. She teaches the basics of proper compost teas and explains that brewing needs to be done at the same temperature in which the plants are living. Air stones are vectors for undesirable bacteria and should not be used. In fact any brewer that can’t be completely cleaned is a bad choice. Air forced recirculators are considered the best option. Tim Wilson has diy plans for these on his website and Kisorganics sells an excellent,but pricey, model. I purchased mine off of Amazon and plan to upgrade soon.
It’s important to keep the air pump above the bucket in case power outages occur and water leaks back into the pump. The recipe I use is fairly simple. It’s based off of Jeremy‘s build a soil recipe which is a cup and a half of castings for a quarter cup of molasses. I don’t actually measure any of those. I just grab a couple handfuls and throw it in the bag along with a couple glugs of black strap to the bucket. Occasionally, I add kelp, neem or alfalfa depending on the time of grow. At the moment, I’m adding alfalfa. Flowers should be starting to form soon, and tricantanol is a naturally occurring growth hormone found in alfalfa found to benefit bud set. I also scratched some alfalfa pellets into the top of the soil.
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Comfrey is a dynamic accumulator and considered one of the best plants for fertilizers. Came across it again and again while researching how to do everything yourself. It’s also pretty invasive if you don’t have the right stuff bocking 14 is the variety I purchased and is only spread by root propagation. Fun fact, bocking 14 refers to Bocking lane, the road where the scientist lived when he came up with this particular variety. At any rate, I purchased five root cuttings in February. Leave started showing up around morel season.
And yesterday I was able to turn the seven that were delivered to me into at least 40 more. Having trouble posting on the same page so I’ll have to continue. Figured out how to make the picture smaller. Not the best at technology.
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Garden this morning.
1 mothers hash plant turned out to be male, but pretty sure I have a female going.
Space monkey is female and has some ridiculous branching!
Noticed these dirt like insect homes in a couple places. Need to do some research wondering if they’re bud rot caterpillar houses
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I think this might be hemp borers. I had them early in the season. @Hashpants may be better able to help.
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Thats a Hemp borer and its in there. Take a needle and poke around there just at or above the hole. Try to kill it before it kills the limb. They hang out right in the hollow center at or above the hole. You can also spray Bt in the hole with a pump sprayer, that will kill it also.
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Wow! Thank you so much for this. I’ll definitely use the BT more and go at it with a needle. Really appreciate it.
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Blumats. Just like the fence install, I stressed way too much for how easy it was to set these up. With a vacation coming up it was time to shit or get off the pot(pun intended). As per instructions I soaked th carrots and checked soil moisture.
The soil was 60 mbars (too wet) so I left the carrots to soak overnight while things dried a bit.
A pressure reducer was screwed on the end of a filtered hose and flex hose connected each carrot with ease. The only rough patch was properly fixing the end caps to the soaker tapes. Thought that I had those in, but when I went and checked later, two of them were leaking a little bit. Easy fix just push the tape back into the end cap and screw on more tightly.
One of those things I wish I had done a month ago, but things are set up and working wonderfully now.
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This girl has a 2 week head start on the rest. She was a tester just to make sure the soil I made wasn’t too hot. Rabbits and a lawnmower claimed a few plants so I decided I’d take this girl all the way to flower.The result of an accidental pollination from Clearwater’s lime overload to HSC orange cream pop. The stem rub is already pretty loud and love the structure. Maybe a happy accident?
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If you’re reading this is and into citrus phenos . I’ll send the first person to ask a pack of 10 seeds.
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Tell me more about the watering setup. Are you using a container, or hooking direct to a garden hose? I need to rig something up as I drag water everyday and it takes a lit of time. Been thinking of an auto system but not sure how to approach.
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Mine connects to a hose but you can use a reservoir. I have 400 ft of hose going from the house. This system does not use timers or electricity. The clay carrot acts as tension meter. When soil gets too dry, the carrot opens a valve and the soaker hose fills with water. For what I’ve read this is considered as superior form of irrigation because the plants are deciding when they want more water. Even with the $50 pressure reducer I’m pretty sure the system cost less than 200 and can be set up in less than an hour. Please let me know if you have any specific questions.
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Woke up yesterday morning fairly certain the dog shit somewhere. Then I remembered the pork neck bones I had going in the crockpot.
The smell wasn’t great but it didn’t compare to the stink of baking the bones. These went at 450 for about an hour. Next time I’ll do it outside over a grill
Blackened bones went into rice vinegar at 1/10 ratio. Stirring once daily to make calcium-phosphorus
I also top dressed a little over over a 1/4 cup of potassium sulfate to each plant.
I traded the rest of the 50 lb bag for a substantial amount of concentrate!
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Garden update:
Seeds went straight into this ground June 1 Space Monkey is the tallest
Orange cream pop is starting flower and is the runt. She was also small when I flowered indoors, though she may have experienced some stunting. So jury is still out
Mothers hashplant is stacking crazy and shows early frost but I forgot to take a pic tbc on that one
Lime overload x Orange cream pop seems promising
And the hash plant d in the background is just starting to flower
Also made some beeswax for a comfrey salve
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not even 3 months, holy moly that is some super soil!!! awesome
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Nice garden! I like to make my own soil mixes as well. Fun to see how the plants respond to different inputs. Never tried KNF but I have been looking into it a bit to possibly experiment with next season.
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