Oh, I was going to include white yarrow too
Hey all,
I transplanted really rootbound plants in solo cups into my no till 20 gal pots. They were being fed Texas tomato food while in the cups which is kind of a synganic fert.
They looked pretty light green after transplanting, I started using a sprayer to keep the top soil layer moist and seems like theyāre slowly looking better. The first week after transplanting they looked pretty rough, now looking a bit better. I want to flip to 12/12 soon but want to get them quite a bit darker. I donāt want to add any liquid salt fert to these beds, but I need kind of a quick N fix. Any no till remedies for a quick N green up? I gave them a top dress of barley when I watered yesterday, was thinking a top dress of crab meal and/or alfalfa meal. But thats probably 2 weeks til I see anything dramatic happening after Iād topdress. Is the solution just making a tea from the alfalfa and crab meal?
Could they be low on iron? Is the yellow at the bottom or on new growth?
1 Like
They could beā¦is it common for iron to get depleted in no till beds? I added minerals back in when I topdressed. It was the BAS modern mineral mix.
Hereās what they looked like after about a week:
3 Likes
It doesnāt look like nitrogen to me, but Iām inexperienced at no till. Whats your ph?
What are your temps like? Is the soil cold?
I water at about 6.5.
I have a space heater in there that keeps the room at about 80. Pots sit on the ground so they likely run a few degrees cooler.
2 Likes
When you guys use cover crop, how do you top dress dry amendments?
1 Like
I mulch w the cover crop, top dress then use my fingers to lightly incorporate
1 Like
I think Iām just going to try to *mulch with, well, mulch lol
I think this way Iāll personally have an easier time mixing it in where Iāll just push the mulch aside, mix, then push it back.
Cover crop would be nice tho, I just think I would destroy it trying to mix the dry amendments in.
2 Likes
Iām my experience, keeping a cover crop going during flowering is tough. They get shaded out bad. In those pots 1 I left empty, got the cover going then planted the solo cups in it. The other I harvested the last crop and planted the solo cups immediately and there was no cover crop under those flowers. Theres a cover germinating but I donāt expect it to do much after another week or 2 bc there wonāt be much light getting to the soil surface.
3 Likes
Alfalfa is good it grows tall, and even if you remove it to the top of the soil with no leaves it will grow back if the roots are good.
4 Likes
I did ok with micro clover.
It was looking pretty raggedy ass by flower but it did itās job. Clover is a good choice, when it is fixing NH3 in its root nodules for the next years crop - it leaksā¦ 
I got nitrogen toxicity symptoms on a weak sativa feederā¦
For top dressing, I buried most of it. It recovers - mostly.
Cheers
G
5 Likes
I had read that clovers help with terpene productionā¦ thoughts?
3 Likes
Oh, that is interestingā¦
It was a CBD grow, they developed some seriously loud and different odors. After curing these dissipated significantly.
The next grow was more subdued & no cover cropā¦
Yup, that needs further investigationā¦
Good thing I still have about 80% of the clover seedsā¦ 
Cheers
G
3 Likes
Youāre actually suppose to get a cover crop in veg then cover it up in flower with some straw and top dressā¦
it then dies off into your soil and adds nutritional value
8 Likes
Yeah thats essentially what I did this time. My remark about having a tough time pertains to trying to get it going once in flowering.
This time I got a decent stand going in 2 of my pots in veg, trimmed it down, used as green mulch but still expect it to bounce back and stay alive.
3 Likes
Really good to know, 
5 Likes
If you can find comfrey their is a particular one, I think itās Bok, Sebring offers roots of it sometimes. Tinytuttle uses it as well.
Itās the perfect balanced cover crop for providing npk and some minerals, you canāt kill it unless you get every little bit of root out of the pot. When outside it spreads like wildfire and takes over everything. I meant to try and get some from him this year.
3 Likes