growing in straw!ftw?

to make a long story short, i burned off the roots feeding early but now they are back and with a vengeance

Great shit here bro keep it up

Hey bro, Ive been following your thread, interesting ideas.

Have you ever considered growing in exclusively Leaf Mold?

Its a reliably blank medium nutrient wise, heavily fungal dominated and free/easy to make with time.

Ive got a couple plants growing in only leaf mold at the moment and they are doing great!

Something to consider...

Rising Moon said:

Hey bro, Ive been following your thread, interesting ideas.

Have you ever considered growing in exclusively Leaf Mold?

Its a reliably blank medium nutrient wise, heavily fungal dominated and free/easy to make with time.

Ive got a couple plants growing in only leaf mold at the moment and they are doing great!

Something to consider...

Click to expand...

i have some, and i have considered it. an interesting idea to say the least, but leaf is less aerated and has way too much saturation. its a good additive as a food for your fungal population in you soil if mixed in or even as a top layer, but as a stand alone media, i have my doubts, at this point my growing in straw method needs more refined to be an actual way to go, but it is very possible.

Hmm maybe mine is more leafy. Because I have a bucket of compost and a bucket of leaf mold, side by side, and the leaf mold weighs at least half as much as the compost. Also lots of leaf stems in mine. But I see your point and would add oyster shell and pumice as well.

nice thread poly, didnt even realize you had this going. cool concept!!

i was thinking about trying to grow in white rice??? what you guys think? LOL jk m8 had to have a chuckle. Plant seems to be doing great though. to be honest i think any medium will grow a plant, conventional or not. the problem is you have to treat most abstract mediums as if they were hydroponics.

go to wal mart and pick up a big bag of plastic beads, put a plant in that and a drip system.....it will grow.

anyhoo ill sub up to this one to see how you faire, im routing for ya as awlays m8!!

i agree completely any media could potentially work the goal is what efficient tho. haha plastic beads could be efficient, but i dont like the idea of smoking petroleum based polymers.

its been a while since ive updated this thread, they are still going but one was having problems the other is not really meeting my expectation, but because of this experiment i have taken to adding straw to my soil, and all i can say is the plants love it, i will never be without straw in the soil, really im doing a mostly soil mix right not, but i want to do a 50/50 mix soon cause the result are great the aeration in the soil..

on top of that fungi mostly dominated so this slows down the decomp to fungi rates and keep the balance of nutrients more even.(and no aerobic conditions even with the fungi helping to eat up oxygen)

but yeah it been a learning exp for sure, i will get some pics up here in a day or so, just being lazy.

wouldnt the straw mixed into the soil give your soil food web a good carbon base? maybe 1/2 and 1/2 and add some red wrigglers to the soil?? maybe also some coffe grounds for vegatative plants.


vermiponics? heheh, i think most of my plants have at least 1 earthworm friend living in thier container. they definatly help with airation and are a nice contributer to the soil food web adding fresh EWC daily.

http://www.redwormcomposting.com/gardening/vermiponics/

this is also a great website to learn about vermi composting if thats something your interested in. ill grab up some pics of my worm bin later and add them to my thread later tonight.

hell yeah throw em up! i want to but im in the city.. and too much added work for me to take care of, microbes and fungi are pretty easy just supply optimal environment and food, and they will appear.(of course with the help of some inoculation.) they die when media dies, and ready for use once again when mixed fresh, know what i mean, i would if had a farm and had all the time in the world to grow. ahh mmaybe one day

Just watch out for Nitrogen lock out.

The carbon (straw) you are adding is like wood, it needs fire (nitrogen) to burn, breakdown and turn to ash (humus).

polyarcturus said:

thats a fucking great IDEA! hmm surprised i never though about that or i did and never brought it to fruitition.. hmm h202 is a good choice for a solven since it will breakdown into water, i think i may attempt this but with alchohol, i have made many essential oils for foliar but this seem very interesting of idea. because incarcerate seed and at certain points will be producing optimal amounts of hormones that could be collected and differentiated.

hmm as far sythetics go... well im not gonna get into it. im not sure which direction i want to go with my nutritioun(cause im trying to make that decision in the next few weeks) ive always used both in combination with amazing results because i inoculate weekly my myco and microbes are very strong. see?
https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/610754-brandx-2.html#post8549978

Click to expand...

IME synths are much more conducive to indoor grows...

i have always combined the 2. i am continuing to do so with dynagro grow soon... i just avoid talking specifics nutrition here because of the "organic fanatics" lack understanding of what nutrition is. syths have their many advantages and really i agree with you but i cant remove the organic elements from my grows now... because i enjoy, synergy, so to speak.

This is an awesome thread. Thanks for sharing! Along for the ride.

Snafu

thought i would do a little update plants not that impressive but i think imporvement to my method can be made and for sure better results
View attachment 2522874
the first pic is of my little straw plants roots, the second for comparison is a clone about the same age same conditions in soil.

Neat idea, great execution.
Now I have been thinking about mycorrhiza and roots fighting for O2... It seems this would be a problem anywhere plants and fungi interact right? But that's kind of... Everywhere. We know certain species of plant and fungus are symbiotic and also that weed doesn't pair up with any fungus that we know of. Shouldn't we be seeing natural examples of say a fungal area where plants can't survive and visa versa? That's what has me thinking. This competition isn't happening to an exclusive state of one or the other...
So I have come to the hypothesis that fungus can help aerate the soil.
Think of it like wicking. Thoughts?
Keep in mind I have this habit of being really fucking right and really fucking wrong. It could go either way at this point lol
I would try a plant in a fully colonized block. Its worth a try.

lame. it won't let me embed the video


check it out

http://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/8453/video-make-a-straw-bale-garden-bed

Redbird1223 said:

lame. it won't let me embed the video


check it out

http://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/8453/video-make-a-straw-bale-garden-bed

Click to expand...

That is cool, thanks for sharing!

Though very different than what poly is doing (poly is much more impressive...ie indoor, in a bag, in just straw vs outdoor, using compost, roots go into base ground soil after haybails).

Very cool stuff in this thread.

-Snafu

just found my plant a month later FINALLY(killed the other one with straw center about 3 weeks ago) something happening but good things! it stunted to all fuck and has been sitting for so long i dont know why it took off now, been meaning to have another go but this shines a ray of hope on the matter. glad i forgot about this girl

looking good mr poly...do you have a thread going for your myco grow?