One Pink Lemonade - no-till cycle 7 in 4 foot diameter pot, 5x5 tent

Northwood said:

Good Lord, that's quite a diversified cover crop! lol

I didn't place anything "hot" (meaning having a lot of available nutrients) in my initial soil mix, except what was in the Pro-mix Organic Herb and Vegetable mix already. I didn't do any layering. For minerals, I did add azomite (the worms need their grit!), and a kilogram or so of "calcium" bentonite, along with some extra perlite (course kind). Yeah I know perlite will crumble in years, but any drainage addition is really only temporary until you build your soil structure anyway. That doesn't happen overnight though. I'm just starting to make progress on that now. However I've had no drainage issues. Water still pools pretty quickly at the bottom of my tent if I give it a bit too much water than it can handle at once.

What you need to be thinking of during your first grow in the soil is your second grow. Once those seeds go in there, anything else you add to your soil after that in at least my style of no-till will likely only benefit that plant late in flower, or more likely sometime in the next grow cycle. I would highly recommend you go to your nearest animal feed store and buy a sack of alfalfa pellets, and add that into your initial soil mix. I wouldn't exceed 3% though, but it's a great inoculant and will also supply all the N you need for your first cycle.

Cannabis leaves don't really represent a huge percentage of the entire plant's biomass. But yeah, I just drop every leaf or pruning back in the pot for cycling, usually just over my hay/straw mulch throughout most of my grow. The roots and stems of your old plants will really only be available to the cycle after the one you add them too (cycle #3). Getting through the first 2 cycles is hardest, but after that the system takes care of itself with nothing for you to do except crazy stupid experiments like trying to grow a single plant to fill a 5X5 tent. Lol

Edit: I just thought of an analogy to no-till growing this way. It's like reloading ammo using a Dillon XL650 with case feeder. There are 5 stations in the press, and so you need to repeat the place bullet, and pull lever 5 full times before the first finished 9mm round finally drops out. But now that all stations are filled, you only need to press and place a bullet once for every stroke of that handle, making 1000 rounds reloaded per hour easily obtainable. No-till is kinda like that.

Click to expand...

Geneiac said:

Northwood, hoping you could add a bit of info about how to include worms into this system...I seem to remember that you stressed the importance of adding worms in an earlier post. I don't have the space to set up worm bins and I'm working out of 30 gallon totes if it makes a difference. I'm currently halfway through flower of my first organic grow, just been using organic dry amendments but would like to transition to a system like yours that just relies on cover crops, worms, and mulching. The way I see it is you have essentially established a perpetual compost pile right on top of your plants lol...N from green cover crops + trim and C from mulching with straw and stems from your previous run. Worm castings and actively feeding worms provide some biologics to the mix, plus you added some wild harvested fungi (I'm a bit unclear as to whether you did this last point).

Its a beautiful thing you've got going!

Also I'm a total noob to this forum thing and some how missed the last month of updates...

Click to expand...

myke said:

Nice! See how their praying the leaves. Did they also do that with your other homemade light?
I’ve always thought it was the light that did that I maybe wrong and it’s a sign of heathy plants/soil.

Click to expand...

Northwood said:

My soil had worms from the start because I used my fresh worm castings in my initial soil mix, and also top dressed with fresh castings during the first cycle. I also added regular garden worms from the backyard, as well as some night crawlers sold as fishing bait. I felt it couldn't hurt! The benefit of using fresh castings is that you'll be introducing way larger variety of organisms, many of which are predators, to your grow. It's not just the worms live in worm bins. I think the other life is way more important than the worms themselves!

Perhaps I'm overly paranoid, but I fear introducing something nasty to my grow by adding stuff straight from the outdoors (other than clean worms). So to help ensure biological diversity, I collected soil from forest, field, and our outdoor cultivated garden, but cycled it through the worm bin first before introducing it to my grow soil.

Are worms themselves necessary in an indoor no-till? Probably not, but it's my opinion that they help speed up nutrient cycling of organic material a little, and every little bit counts when my plants are 100% dependent on that process for nutrition.

If you can't have a worm bin and want them in your grow, then I'd suggest just buying a half pound or whatever of worms and adding them directly on top of your moistened soil. They come with some castings and stuff to keep them happy during shipping, so the other life-forms I'm talking about should be in there too. Look for local sources. I found mine on our local kijiji.

About your transitioning plan to cycled no-till. The first grow cycle cannot rely on nutrient cycling, because that takes awhile. So the first grow is essentially just a "super soil" while you actively think about your next grow from day one. In other words, the biomass you mulch with will only start contributing nutrients to the plants of your NEXT grow, and some even to the grow after that. Everything I did during this entire thread had nothing to do with feeding my current plant (even when it gets into late flower), but instead will only contribute nutrients needed by my next grow.

Click to expand...

Geneiac said:

Right on my dood. Makes a lot of sense. I'll look into local sources of worms. So I guess the mulching/covercrops will provide enough food for the worms? Other than that I just need to make sure to keep the soil moist and within their preferred temperature and they'll be happy and able to reproduce?

Your plant's looking great by the way!

Click to expand...

Northwood said:

Yup, they'll reproduce right in the grow pot/bed. Just ensure there's enough mulch in there so that you never get even close to seeing the soil surface. That will help stabilize the moisture content in the top part of your soil where red wriggler worms like to live, and where oxygen is most abundant. Remember also that worms don't eat hard food because they lack teeth. The bacteria and fungi need to work on it first for awhile, and that's not going to happen if the top dries out between watering.

Click to expand...

Northwood said:

Well it's been 20 days since flip and things are proceeding normally for this stage I guess. Everything looks healthy still, so that's the main thing. She's about to enter in what I'd consider a critical part of its flowering stage where any nutrient or environment issues would start to become apparent. Now I just cross my fingers.

Click to expand...

vuts said:

currently growing the same strain and I have to say, the smell these plants give off is out of this world.

looking really nice

Click to expand...

Northwood said:

I think I overdid the light. The new single-bladed sugar leaves look stressed with slightly burnt tips on colas closest to the light, and the buds terminating those colas are growing more slowly and smaller than the buds further down on the same branch. Yesterday I raised the light another 5 or 6 inches which I hope will help. I've had humidity issues too, so I also slowed down the exhaust fan speed to try keep it over 35%. That low humidity isn't making things any easier for the poor ol'gal.

I guess it's going to take me awhile to get used to working with these new quantum boards, and perhaps nearly 1,000W of Samsung LM301H diodes is a bit of overkill in a 5X5. If I don't see improvement in a few days, I'll raise them further or even dim them a bit. I need to follow my own advice about "having too much of a good thing" because even light can be one of those things.

Here she is this morning:
View attachment 4773391

So the plan now is just to continue watering and waiting with crossed fingers, hoping things improve. She's taking close to 30 liters of water each day now with the low humidity and high light intensity. Temps are around 80F with lights on so at least that's under control.

One thing I haven't mentioned is that I seem to be losing a lot of soil volume. The soil level in the pot has shrink down almost 4 inches compared to how high it was at the end of my very first grow cycle. The trend seems to be accelerating, but drainage doesn't seem to be negatively affected yet, thank goodness. But with over 21 square feet of soil surface area, a 4" difference represents a lot of peat moss disappearing out my tent exhaust in the form of CO2.

At some point I'll need to top up the soil volume with something to make up for the continuing losses. I'm just now sure with what yet.

Click to expand...

Gardenator said:

Would adding compost and aeration ontop and replanting the cover crop be harmful to the bed in some way? Or even new soil and replanting the cover crop? I just wonder because if i were to run into this issue in my bed later down the road these were my first two thoughts. How would that effect the life in the bed?

Click to expand...

Northwood said:

Compost adds nutrients which you may not need in later grow cycles. I'll need to eventually top off my pot with something that wont affect the existing nutrient levels, preferably inert that wont decay but still offer something bacteria can aggregate for drainage. I'm thinking plain bagged mineral soil mixed with perlite might be an option. I won't be doing anything like that before my next cycle, but probably will before I start cycle #9.

Click to expand...

Northwood said:

I'm still not sure if I like the particular citrus smell it has. It's different, so perhaps it will grow on me. At least it doesn't smell like a freshly opened can of Johnson's floor wax while growing like one strain I grew before. lol

How far along are your plants?

Click to expand...

green_machine_two9er said:

When you top it off do you plan on just covering your living mulch layer? starting a new one mulch a few inches up and let everything else break down?

Click to expand...

vuts said:

i LOVE that citrus smell, has a really skunky tang to it. Maybe i'm just nostalgic but it smells similar to stuff i used to get in the UK years ago.
I grew some tweed bakerstreet before this so i know what you mean lol

roughly 3 weeks flower, really surprised with the trich and smell production this early, hoping the smoke is as good as the smell!

Click to expand...