Making Organics Work Commercially

Yeah you definitely have to filter the teas before the pump…
Or making tea bags from coffee filters helps too.

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Did you ever try compressed air blown into the lines? You can do it every so often to help keep them clean.

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This industry tends to take things to extremes, and hype rules all. I’m a big believer in not overfeeding or over-saturating with photons. I don’t believe in the kitchen sink approach to soils or teas. To a point, less really is more. Sometimes you see these inky black teas that have 20 ingredients, many of them dubious, and it’s pretty gross. The resulting plants always look burnt and unhealthy. I see this all the time with new KNF grows.

I grew up on a farm where we used organic no-till and low-till methods for fields and garden alike. I’m not lazy, but I prefer to do as little plant management as possible. I don’t use no-till due to a lack of space, but I do use water only modified coots mix specifically tailored to the high tapwater pH here. Water-only methods really help minimize the amount of work I have to do, which leaves me more time to nurture the plants’ spirits, not just their physical vessels.

So, in answer to your question, no teas or FPJs or special watering mechanisms required. Just use no-till methods in beds or big pots, and straight water. If you know what you’re doing and educate yourself on the correct methods and procedures, and have good inputs, after the first round no-till gets easier and hopefully better every subsequent round.

A rec operation in NV has gotten a lot of local TV airtime by doing organic no-till. They seem to be doing fairly well. They recommend no-till as the cheapest method because it requires so much less effort AND money AND water. They also use a lot of LEDs. :blush:

Check out their other videos. Green Life Productions.

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That’s what I’m talking about. Thanks for sharing. And I would have to say I agree with you and what was said in the video… there is a lot of over complicating things. When everything is already in the soil there really isn’t much that needs to be fed via irrigation. Love their clover cover crop. Last time my canopy was so thick that towards the end of flowering very few still had a bed clovers due to the lack of penetration through the canopy.

Cheers

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Glad you found the info you where looking for swampthing🖒 and @nube you are the man!!

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Turns out @Dumme built a cannabis aquaponic system similar to the one I showed with fish and everything (smaller obviously). So it definitely can be done.


Maybe you guys saw it already haha.

Although I myself follow the build the soil, let it do it’s thing, and topdress every once in a while philosophy, I find it pretty cool when people can meld organics and technology together. To each his/her own.

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Thanks man. I basically ran something similar but with individual smart pots with cover crops etc. I ran beds a couple times but only certain strains worked or were worthwhile using that method. More than anything I created this thread for people to talk about ideas, studies, what they’ve tried, read about… anything about organic farming to help grow more biodynamic tasty efficient cannabis.

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Chickens and rabits provide a lot of help and are good for breaking down the leftover bits into compost.
thanks to @nube for the link

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Anyone with questions about aquaponics, I’m here to answer :slight_smile:

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Adding some wisdom I gained concerning organic growing at scale.
I ran a commercial scale organic grow a few years ago and found that soil test amendment suggestions were about half of the nutrients we really should have applied as dry amendments.

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Chicken poop is especially great but hot, as their piss and poop is all one. I recommend composting the bedding from the coop and their poop first before using. Even better, if you have your own worm bin you can skip the composting step and just feed it to the worms to help break down (this is the ideal way to do it).

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Are you saying the amount of ammendments to be added were half of the suggested amount or the cost was half the price of using a traditional bottled nutrient line?

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Rabbit poop!! Good source of npk and the best part is you can use it right out of the rabbits butt😁 no worry of “the burn”. Can you feel it? Uhh yea it feels good. . .hahahah
Edit- I also like using good old fashion cow poop,got to compost it for at least a year but, I live on a ranch so I’ve got plenty of it, I’ll send some straight to your door, in a bag. . . On fire lol jk

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When submitting my soil for testing I asked for organic amendment suggestions based on the nutrient needs of hemp. Unfortunately, hemp is a pretty low nutrient demand crop and drug type cannabis is very nutrient thirsty. The amount of amendments to be added should have been double what the soil tests suggested. We only added what they suggested and regretted it almost immediately.

I’m not sure what the cost difference would be between doing commercial organic and bottled nutrient lines. I ran the price comparison between organics and nutrient lines at a hobby scale years ago and the organics cost me about 1/10 of the price of even the cheaper nutrient lines, so I’ve been full organic ever since. When I looked at doing a 30,000 square foot grow I honestly didn’t even put those nutrient lines on the table as an option. If I had to guess I’d say doing organics at commercial scale would easily be 1/20 of the price of those nutrient lines. The disparity between hobby and commercial scale organic, when compared to nutrient lines, is based on the fact that you receive massive price discounts for buying bulk organic amendments.

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Ah ok gotcha. Yea when I was growing medical it was a major savings. Was doing Botanicare bc it was easy. Once my system was rolling and it was clockwork I tried to reengineer it a bit backwards… I started using less bottles like liquid Karma and adding leonardite/humics to the medium and a little to the rez. Would brew teas of things like Jamaican bat guano during peak flowering. I quit doing that bc of particle issues but would then started brew separately, strain/filtering the tea then add that to irrigation/feed rez.
I always wanted to have my full brew funky teas to be one in the same as my irragation rez but I just add so much stuff to it I don’t think it’s possible to filter out directly from brew to line the way I do it. Maybe it’s just best I brew first separately then add it to the rez like I was doing. But for example this last round I did which was just a personal one, I had a big 30gal (aprox size) rubbermaid type container bubbling 24/7 and would add ammendments without a tea bag (though I started w tea bags but ended up just leaving them in there and started adding stuff straight up like a stew). with this stew I would hand water by just dipping a pitcher and going straight to the pots (depending on the stew of the week, I would sometimes add water to a pitcher filled 1/3-2/3 filled with stew if I thought it was too hot but usually not) With this stew I would never empty jit all the way when dipping pitchers, once it got down to 25% remaining, I would add more water and mix more shit in. Sometimes I would just take a pitcher or two out and then replace the water.

Wow, not sure where I was going with that… but with a “super soil”, cover crop, and teas/ammended irragtion is obviously totally the way to do it.

More of the question I have here is best way to automate and streamline the process. This is also tough for me bc I know with organics I’m always tweaking what I give them based on how quick the stuff breaks down into usable nutes for the plants and also based on the needs of the plants. Maybe I just am overthinking and over complicating this, as organics should really be the opposite.

@Dumme would love to hear more about your methods of aquaponics. I lived in the roaring fork valley for a while and there was this great aquaponic farm made by this guy who taught renewable farming techno I would go check out. I need to find his info and share it bc he really did some great stuff. I’ll try to find it

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Well, I have a 4ftx8ftx4ft concrete tank that I cycle about 4-6 times an hour. Between the Filters and the tanks, its about 5000L of water. I use a waterfall pump to push the water around the system in a 1.5in PVC pipe. I use an aeroponic method with 2ft culverts as aero chambers. You can follow my thread here:

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Great! Thanks @Dumme

That’s good shit

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@Swampthing I just saw you said you have used botanicare before. I have some botanicare KIND base and grow. . . Would this be the same that you have used?

Never used the Kind line… pure blend and PBPro is what I’ve used

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Lol ok I’m just too sissy to use it so I was looking for info hehe but thanks bro. . .your gear is looking great btw!