All that ancient IMO wisdom your tapping into. We all go back to it, it is the entirety of accumulated knowledge.
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Delighted to hear the STS done the job for you.
Beautiful pics of the redwoods. Definitely on the list of places to visit. Trees release those phytoncides that are beneficial to us too.
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Not sure if I mentioned the couple of plants I threw outside as an experiment, but they seem to be trucking along. The one of the left is an Auto “OG Kush” From Humboldt Seed and the other two are Pakistan Valley from World of Seeds… both were freebies that I received many moons ago. I’m surprised that they all germinated. Never mind the volunteers that sprouted from hash trash in the background of the first pic…
I did cut one branch from the reversed T-1000 and hit the OG Kush Auto, and already seeing signs of pollination. My understanding is that the Auto gene is recessive, so all of these “F1” beans will not auto-flower, but they would be fems. I think, if I grew out the fems and reversed a few of those and then pollinated the group of fems that I may be able to find some plants that auto-flower in the progeny. Sounds like a lot of work 
Some observations on the outdoors stuff… the stems rubs seem to be stronger in smell than my indoor plants. The OG Kush Auto is smelling pretty typically like cannabis right now, some lemon floor cleaner thing going there. The Paki Valleys smell quite different from one another, one has a very strong cherry smell on the stem rub. It’s much harder to keep pests away outdoors!
I’m not expecting much yield or anything from them, not even sure if they’ll finish before the rainy season here. Just really cool to be able to throw some plants outdoors here…
I ran up to Concentrates, Inc yesterday to pick up some myco supplies and some Bu’s blend and Sunshine Mix… that place is like a gardeners heaven… they had a couple of free BioAg samples I grabbed, some I hadn’t seen before… Multi-Mino (Microminerals) and Boro-Mino… where is that Boron guy, I bet he’d love these! The guys at the check out were super knowledgeable too, giving me some ideas on charging Bio-Char and they hooked it up when I told ‘em I was growin’ cannabis… I fuckin love Portland, haha!
Also, I dumped my City Picker’s in prep for the next run… a few observations: The boxes that I only did one run in, ended up being pretty clean underneath the grate. Not much root mass had accumulated down there. Some finer particles had slipped through the grate. All of the wicking corners were intact though. On the boxes I ran two cycles in… the res was about half full with roots, decaying matter, and finer soil particles. They both smelled pretty anaerobic after sitting for a couple of weeks - stinky! There were a TON of worms in the bottom of the two cycle boxes and it looked like a mess of castings, roots and sludge under the grate. My concern is that with all that junk down there, you’re only getting about half the water volume you can normally fill the res to. There’s also no real way to flush all the mess out without disassembling the boxes.
I think going forward on the CP boxes, I’m going to do a couple of things to see if I can keep the finer soil particles from getting into the res. I’m thinking about picking up some medium duty landscaping fabric and lining the wicking corners with the fabric, so the soil can’t become loose and seep through the grate when it makes direct contact with the water. Also, I’m thinking about putting a layer of landscape fabric on top of the grate, at least covering the bigger holes, then putting the soil on top of that, leaving the wicking corners uncovered by fabric. My thinking is that when I top water occasionally, a bunch of particles wash down through the grate and end up in the res. Also with the worms and other living things in there, I’m sure particles get shifted around and loosened and make their way down by force of gravity. I’m thinking the roots will still be able to grow right through the fabric, into the res without issue… but I guess there’s only one way to find out!
If you guys/gals have any better ideas, I’m all ears… I’ve got awhile before I ramp back up!
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I dunno anything about those City Pickers/Earth Boxes, but the landscaping fabric does sound like a good idea. I was actually thinking that as I was reading what you wrote, before you mentioned it. And I guess just do one cycle per, instead of two? Or is the landscaping fabric so that you can actually do two cycles before you have to dump the soil?
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Landscape fabric (may) clog eventually in the pore spaces but isn’t a bad idea. I’ve seen people make raised beds for vegetables out of that heavy duty landscape fabric before and when disassembled the ground they were on stayed fairly clean. Believe it or not though worms can squeeze and migrate through those tiny holes in the fabric with ease and seem to like doing it. Pond filter matting may be another option and possibly better designed for what you’re trying to achieve. Not sure about price comparisons nor am I familiar with those city picker boxes though.
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Yeah, it’d be cool to stretch it to two cycles, at least. I doubt you could go much further beyond that without amending, but maybe you could just keep top dressing. I’d worry about everything becoming too compacted eventually?
I think it’d be OK for it get clogged with soil particles, as long as the water molecules still flow through the fabric both ways. I used to have a big raised bed made out of the same felt-like material that they use to Smart Pots and had considered material like that as well. The worms didn’t have a problem doing through that material either. Pond filter is another good consideration, depending on how thick and what materials it is made from.
When I do decide to install something, I’ll be sure to include some pictures of the inside of the boxes and grates. I know it’s pretty hard to visualize without reference.
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I purchased my first pack of seeds from them in 2012, Afghan Kush. Memory lane ….
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That seems like a valid concern. I really wanna see one of these things in person, just so I can get an idea of what they actually are, how they work etc. I’ve read about them, looked at pictures, but I feel like that doesn’t give me a good enough idea of how they operate. I mean, with the big ones (which I think are 12 gallons?), it seems like you could do a full-on no till kinda thing in them, almost. But from what you’re saying, it doesn’t sound like it.
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Time flys! I think I got these in 2015… I love how seeds are like a time capsule, encapsulating all this information in a tiny shell.
Yeah, you really just have to use 'em a run or two to see what they’re about. I mean pictures can only go so far. The big City Pickers hold maybe 10-12 gallons of soil, and you can definitely get a few runs from them, but I don’t think you could really accomplish a true no-till scenario, IMO. I was watching a Q&A with Jeremy at BAS and some dude in Hawaii ran his like 5-6 runs without dumping, so you could as least get that far… maybe I’ll go further after putting in the fabric and see what happens.
haha welcome to OG dude… you may wanna stop by this thread… unless you’re Boron dude.
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In my diy sips the whole floor/reservoir is vermiculite and landscaping hose. I’m going to no till them for a while, but honestly im going to move to smaller sips of a similar diy style. I can report back on the condition of the floor/reservoir after I dump.
Many diy designs are similar to EBs and CPs, but use the lid of the tub as a floor with hundreds of smaller home drilled. Landscape fabric seems like a good idea that I may try in my EBs. It didn’t even dawn on me that there would be a diminished reservoir with all that soil and worms that ends up down there.
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Haha! It took every fiber of my being to hold back and not comment on that post. Seriously, I sooooo wanted to tear someone a new asshole. But I didn’t… And I’m proud of myself for that haha.
@CrunchBerries I would “join” y’all (and Emperor Palpatine)(is that his name? Palpatine?), the SIP’s thing sounds good, but, as I’ve mentioned many times before, they just take up too much room. And since I only have access to the front of my tent, it’s just not doable. I dunno how I’d get to the SIPs in the back of my tent, other than, like, walking all over shit haha.
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im proud of you too
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I fucking love that bit, so funny. Portlandia is for sure one of my favorite shows ever. In fact, I think I’m gonna blaze a j of that Soar and spend the day re-watching the series for the eightieth time. Thanks, @BeagleZ! I really was sitting here being like,”Pssshhhh… Okay… What am I gonna do today…?” But getting baked and re-watching Portlandia sounds good to me.
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I wish we were neighbors
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You say that now, but when it’s 3am on a Tuesday and we’re cranking Jane’s Addiction or The Dead and me and my friend Natalie or May Ling or whoever are sitting in the backyard arguing about who “the best” writer is or how much social media sucks or whatever… I haven’t seen either of my neighbors in weeks and I’m pretty sure there’s a reason for that haha.
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sounds like my kind of firepit lol
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haha, don’t feed the trolls!! But yeah, sometimes you have to unleash on someone.
Lol, that episode was hilarious.
I really wanna go back and watch it now that I’ve been in Portland almost a year. I’m sure there’s a shit ton of stuff I missed, just from not having lived here when I first watched it, inside jokes and shit.
Doesn’t sounds too bad to me either… haha. I haven’t seen my neighbors in a while, they’re hoarders and don’t even live in the house because it’s filled with so much shit… plus they’re a little crazy, so I don’t mind their absence.
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Awesome to see you throwing a few plants outside! That’s very cool. 
Even if they don’t grow through the fabric, they’ll go down the wicks and into the rez from there. Like @minitiger said, probably easiest to just dump and reset small SIPs like this, so there might be little value in landscaping fabric in that case. There’s not enough volume for notill to be worthwhile over time in small SIPs like Earthboxes and City Pickers, and it does become too compacted over time according to Jeremy @ Buildasoil. He never had as nice of plants in the notill EBs compared to the reset EBs when doing clone runs on his YT videos. Double the size at least for notill (25gal +), imho. And yes, topdressing heavily is a requirement in notill!
This makes me glad Boulder has a weeknight noise law. I’m all for having a good time on the weekend, but I also work for a living and need to sleep. We’ve had disrespectful neighbors like this in the past, and the cops took care of them pretty quickly after multiple houses called the non-emergency line. We didn’t even know this was a thing until the good neighbors told us!
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