Sealed Tent, Living Soil & The Quest For Fire

Been a while so it’s time for an update.

I still haven’t gotten a replacement chiller, but I’m moving onwards anyways. So the tent will be open air circulation instead of being sealed for this current run. Is what it is.

I just transplanted some 2 week old Sour Diesel clones into the garden bed. I also did a top dress of some goodies (fish meal, kelp meal, DTE Biolive, basalt rock dust and glacial rock dust) covered with castings, covered with freshly chopped green manure cover crop (mostly buckwheat, alfalfa, and some clover) and mulched with some more straw.

Chopping the cover crop


Castings over top dressing/existing mulch


Green manure over worm castings

Fresh straw over green manure


Happy little clones




Some soil porn from planting



Some worms were getting down on the decomposing roots from an older cut plant.

Freshly planted Sour Diesel Mom




My OG Kush Mom

So none of my first round of OG cuttings took root . I have a second set of cuttings in the clone dome on day 16 right now. I’m going to let them ride 28 days before pulling the second set. I’m about to take a 3rd round of cuttings and fill up my entire tray trying to get this plant to root, which is frustrating because I had 100% success on my second round or Sour D cuttings.
If anybody knows the special secret to rooting OG Kush clones, please chime in.

I’ll update later after I’ve trained down my Sour clones/Mom. That’s all for now.

Training Day

This is my simple method for training young clones into have many tops. Though I’m about a week late to this, the method still is the same. I usually try to have at the very least 6-8 nodes when starting training.

Bamboo/Rubber Wire Hook Stakes





I use the stakes to hold the plants in place while gently bending them over without kinking the stems.

Before


After



And then I snip the very first/newest node at the top of the main stem. The tippety top of the plant.




I’ll do one more round of this with more stakes and likely one more topping in the next 10 days at most.

Plants Trained






That’s it for now. I’ll update in the next week or so.

Happy Gardening!

Vegetative Update

Plants have taken well to their training and are branching out. I will train them down once more by the end of the weekend, and likely top the most dominant branches.









After the next round of training, I’ll give the plants about another 7-10 days, before I throw a trellis net over them. I’m hoping to put these into flower in the next 2 weeks. I’ll update again after the 2nd round of training is done.

Have a great weekend!

cdgmoney250 said:

The last run (and first run) turned out great, but I did experience some deficiencies towards late flower. I’m ashamed to admit that I got lazy after planting and didn’t keep an eye on my soil PH, which resulted in some of the less than perfect growth at the finish.

I have been prepping my soil for the past 5 months getting ready to get my new round going. The soil had been sitting dry and desiccated for about 1-1/2 years, so it was a slow methodical practice of hand watering by sprayer over the course of about three weeks to re moisten the soil. I then planted an entire bed of nitrogen and phosphorus fixing cover crop and let them go for 2 months. I then chopped and tilled in the entire cover crop to the top 6” of soil. My PH was still high so I added some soil sulfur and planted another cover crop . I just recently chopped this crop and left it as mulch while I was bringing my PH into a more suitable range.

1st cover crop before chop. There were peas, beans, clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, and hairy vetch in the mix.
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After chopping and tilling into top 6”.
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Added Soil Sulfur, layered some ew castings, and covered with straw mulch

Then I did it all over again, without the tilling. This round also didn’t have any beans.
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I let this one really build up some biomass…
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Chop & Drop

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Covered with some more straw and now we’re ready to start the show.

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You mostly shouldn't have to monitor pH, in living soil, but maybe in some cases, it may be a good idea. What do you use to check pH of your soil, and at what pH, are you aiming for?

Hollatchaboy said:

You mostly shouldn't have to monitor pH, in living soil, but maybe in some cases, it may be a good idea. What do you use to check pH of your soil, and at what pH, are you aiming for?

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I used to believe the same thing when I first started into living soil, because that was what everyone was saying about living soil and organic growing at the time. A lot still do. Including the guy who I modeled when I first started, who goes by MountainOrganics on IG.

But pH influences nutrient availability in living soil just like any other growing system (hydro, field growing, whatever). Everybody assumes that the microbes and root exudates magically form this symbiotic relationship that either brings the soil to a perfect pH range, or offers the same level of bioavailable nutrition, regardless and independent of the soil geology/composition/pH.
That’s just not the case.

Soil flora/fauna are great and amazing and stimulate wonderful plant responses, but won’t have the same results if you’re growing in alkaline silt/clay at a pH of 8.2 in dry environment, as they would growing in a peat based mineral and element amended soil that you keep at an optimal pH range of 6.1-6.4 and 50% RH.

With that said, I try to keep my soil between 6.1-6.4 pH. I use a Bluelab Multimedia pH Meter to monitor soil levels.

About 9 months ago, my soil was consistently between 6.8-7.1 pH. Lab analysis confirmed this, linked on first couple posts of this thread. I added the maximum recommended annual application rate of soil sulfur (2lbs/100 sqft), and cultivated it into the top 6” horizon. I’ve been watering in RO water at 5.8 pH adjusted with citric acid since then. My plain RO is about 6.2 pH.

I’m finally about to be getting into the range that I want to be in just now.









Now this is when my soil is quite moist, but not wet. As the soil drys out, the pH will start to creep up a little bit. I basically just don’t want my soil above 6.5 (preferably 6.4) before the next irrigation cycle, trying to maintain optimal soil moisture .