ATTENTION: Irish "Tomato" Growers!

[PayDirt]

Okay guys, here's the long awaited update...



From the outset, it seems this whole experiment has been an exercise in futility. Literally everything went wrong.



When this thread petered out I had six growers interested in participating: five who made contact via the forums (RollItUp.org and Cannabis.com) and one introduced through an acquaintance. So I set about processing the bulk ingredients I had left over from last growing season; enough raw material for eleven plant grow bags.


Then the litany of woes began...


First: while processing the predigested organic substrate material I burnt out the motor on my milling machine... with only nine grow bags finished.


Second: of the five growers who expressed an interest (via the forums) in receiving samples of my soil, only three could provide the requisite evidence of their growing competence (ie: crop photos or grow-logs). So I was left with only nine plant bags, and only four qualified growers.


Third: of the three forum growers who expressed an interest, only two actually collected their samples. I won't name the grower who never got back to me with a preferred drop-off location... he knows who he is.




So, all in all, a total failure.


It's actually been so haphazard as to generate a sort of comedic appeal. Let me give you a few examples:


I supplied the soil in brown paper grow bags, so the growers could simply plant the entire bag in their regular soil, water their regular soil as usual and simply allow my â??PayDirtâ?� soil to slowly absorb the moisture it needs through the paper bag. However, the soil turned out to be so highly absorbent and soaked up so much water as to thoroughly saturate and disintegrate the paper bags... despite the fact that each paper bag was individually wrapped in plastic and then double wrapped in two thick plastic rubble sacks and all three sample deliveries were collected within 24 hours of being dropped off. The stuff is like a sponge.


The batch of sterilized worms I produced to provide aeration for the soil (always a good idea for any growers out there) were pilfered! I went to check on them one morning only to find a seagull in my garage greedily helping himself to the contents of my wormery. Now that it's been contaminated by a flying rodent I have to empty the wormery and start over.


Dropping off one of the samples in a public park in the middle of the night: torch in one hand, GPS in the other, backpack full of plastic wrapped soil bags... I inadvertently stumbled upon two young gay men in flagrante. Far from expressing any embarrassment, they seemed somewhat disappointed when I walked on instead of accepting their invitation to join in.




So, two bags each to a grower from Cannabis.com and another from RollItUp.org, two more bags to a friend of a friend, three bags still sitting in my garage unclaimed, a burned out milling machine, a sullied wormery and one homosxual proposition later... it's certainly been an experience.


I can't publish the results collected by my acquaintance grower as he could possibly be linked to me, but I'll endeavor to have the other two growers (who are known forum members) report their results in this thread.


I still have three bags left if anyone else is interested?




As usual, I'll happily answer any questions anyone might have.



Sincerely,

-PayDirt

[karmeron]

sent u a mail.

Just wondering, how does this affect a strict nutrient diet? Is this to be used instead of nutrients? Also what is your "expected" yeild increase compared to standard non nutrient soil + nutrient additives?

Also would these living organisms in the soil affect the co2/o2 mixture in the air and acidity of soil?

[PayDirt]

karmeron,

Okay, okay, lots of questions here so I'll try to answer them all.

Below are all your questions including the ones asked in the email you sent me (Don't worry, it's just the pertinent soil questions. I keep all personal info confidential and delete all emails after I read them).

Just wondering, how does this affect a strict nutrient diet?

...it doesn't.

As I've explained, I use a predigested nutrient substrate which is highly absorbent and provides a microscopic structure to which the rhizobacteria can adhere. The nutrient substrate itself is inert (it's organically derived), it neither alters the ph nor interacts with the nutrients... but it will absorb solube nutrients. This doesn't hurt the plants growth, in fact it prevents the leaching of soluble nutrients via watering and helps istribute soluble nutrients more evenly.

However, the biggest problem with nutrient-only grows is the altered metabolism of nutient-only grown plants. Such plants ar effectively force-grown.

I liken this to human nutrition... you can produce really big kids just by stuffing them with copious quantities of starch, but they won't be healthy.

If you want the very best yield from your plants (and all you guys should be growing for yield as opposed to plant size or growth rate), then you need plants with optimised metabolisms... not just unhealthy sickly plants whose metabolisms are stressed due to being force-grown with excessive light; CO2 and bulk nutrients.

For that, you need to provide all the various micronutrients necessary to prevent deficiencies. Micronutrient deficiencies tend to hinder the production of the enzymes involved in the anabolic processes which produce the more exotic metabolites... such as the cannibinoids.

As I've already mentioned, you can adequately assess the metabolic health (and infer the qualiy of the soil) of a tomato plant based on the yield of exotic metabolites (ie: lycopene yields).

For example: Organically grown vegetables can often yield twenty or more times the quantity of various vitamins and minerals found in their mass-produced intensively-farmed rivals.

The same certainly should hold true for your particular brand of "tomatoes".


How does this effect the nutrients I already use?

There shouldn't be any negative interaction.

My soil is extremely absorbent. In fact it is so absorbent that it should almost completely eliminate the problem of nutrient burn... if you use the same nutient dose for both the plants grown in my soil and the contols, then the amount of soluble nutrient required to cause nute burn with my soil should kill the control group plants.


Is this to be used instead of nutrients?

With ot without... doesn't really matter. If you just use the soil, it should out perform regular soil. If you use nutrients, it should out perform regular soil plus nutrients.

The nutrient mix that I use as a substrate is insoluble... you won't find it in any soluble nutrient mixture. It also contains the full spectrum of other elements (heavy metals etc) required for plant growth, stuff soluble nutrient manufacturers assume your plants can derive from the soil you use... but such is not always the case: even composts are manufactured from farm waste which itself is deficient in trace elements (intensive faming causes such deficiencies).

But it's not simply a matter of nutrients (soluble or otherwise), it's the elevated levels of rhizobacteria which the soil supports that makes the real difference.


I usually use a nutrient free soil and stick to a strict plan of nutrients, but does this "paydirt" also contain NPK?

Nope... just the naturally occuring nitrogen; phosphorous and potassium found in the compost base and the bacterial innoculant.


Also what is your "expected" yeild increase compared to standard non nutrient soil + nutrient additives?

I've seen up to (approx) 50% increase in plant size with ordinary garden plants. But can't be sure how much of that was down to the gardener usually using piss-poor garden dirt. I'd assume that the yield of complex metabolites is even higher again, but that would be an anecdotal observation.

This little comparative grow experiment is my first attempt at getting concrete comparison data.


Also would these living organisms in the soil affect the co2/o2 mixture in the air and acidity of soil?

Not noticeably... rhizobacteria are usually anaerobic (there are some chemosynths involved), but their impact upon either CO2 or O2 levels would be miniscule.

Even with the higher levels of microbes supported by the nutrient substrates in my soil, the total biomass is still pretty small... maybe a few grams at best. Not enough to adversely effect your air mixture.

If you are growing in pure CO2 (above atmospheric pressure: 101 kPa) then you will inhibit nitroen fixation (the primary benefit of rhizobacteria) simply because there isn't any nitrogen to fix in the first place. But again, my soil should out perform regular soil presuming identical conditions.

The nucleic acids in the rhizobacteria ARE present in sufficient quantities to alter ph, but these acids remain isolated behind the cell walls so long as the rhizobacteria enjoy a natural life cycle.

I've read that some of you "tomato" growers will bake/microwave your soil in order to sterilise it (lest moulds or fungus foul the crop). Doing this with my soil will most definitely acidify the soil... not to mention how badly it will affect the soils performance.

*************************************************


In the interst of honesty, I suppose a few caveats are in order:

So far only three growers have collected samples and are growing in my "paydirt" soil... of the nine bags I managed to process before my milling machine burnt out:

-two bags went to an acquaintance, but I haven't heard back from him yet;

-two more bags went to "liblah" over on Cannabis.com, he seems to be doing very well with it, but hasn't harvested yet;
ATTENTION: Irish "Tomato" Growers! - Page 4 - Marijuana Growing ...post at the bottom of the page

-two more went to a grower on this forum (he hasn't posted anything so I won't print his username); he's had a concretion problem. He didn't use any worms for aeration (something I recommend) and the soil seems to have solidified, stifling the roots which in turn somewhat stunted the plants;


...so for anyone interested in participating in this comparative grow (there are still three plant bags left), be aware that you are risking a lost crop.

Thats why I've been eating the cost of the bags (which is significant), and why I've only given two bags (enough for two plants) to each grower.


I've instructed the grower from this forum to add some worms and maybe mix the soil with some moss peat, so hopefully the plants can bounce back... I'll keep everyone informed of how things go.


-PayDirt

[dmahny88]

this is great. to bad with the whole disaster plan you had. Guess thats how it goes when ur business partners are stoners heheh
your words about our hobby's ignorance to a lot of soil aspects kind of shocked me. I joined this site and couldn't for the life of me find out why there was nobody out there spreading mycorr. habits/techniques for soil around much on online forums (the real indoor soil farmers don't get internet??).
ok my 2 cents.
I think you need to re-asess how you tend to "learn" about your soil's ability. Why not be more lofty in your goals. You should be looking deeper into your results and be deciding/or figuring more out about cannabis' specific needs in your soil. Ok or not so lofty(but still good):
what kind of chemical/disolved nutes can be added to what extent without hindering the plant? <--Thats a good question looking for a hypothesis
Do "tomato" plants often do better with more [conc.] of vitamens/elements the better as a rule(w/o burn of course)? your soil uses mycorrhizae as a very important factor; quick question, what is your choice of bacteria and how do you decide? Do you have just one bacteria type that you choose? and lastly,how would one learn more(online) on the overall process of creating organic, live, dirt like you have?

[karmeron]

Just a little thought

If this soil has some naturaly occuring NPK and im putting in just enough to get the best yield, then your added NPK will be too much??

you keep talking about nute burn.... but I can honestly say as a grower and from talking to a lot of growers, this is not an issue, if you follow very carefully the guidelines that manufacturers give there is no nute burn. Most nutes are desigend to give th plant exactly the nutrients they need to give the best yields as proven by LOTS of tests. So I dont really see the major benifit of this, because if plants are given exactly what they need and then the "organisms" in your soil are producing more NPK that will be too much?

Also you mentioned about if you fed a human starch then they would be huge but not healthy, however, if you were harvesting a human for say fat, then you whould probably be getting as much of that out of them as u can, I havent really been shown that cannabis plants specifically need a lot of a micro nutrient to produce more "buds". most, if not all of the micro nutrients are in manufactured nutes, like "supervit" for example.

At the end of the day a grower only really needs yeild of "buds" with good THC and CBD, not really anything else. so leaf and stem production is secondary importance, so technically a marijuana plant grown witth crap leaves/stems, but amazing buds is "unhealthy". But its what growers grow for.

I maybe way off but I just dont see the major issue. Usually in a non-organic grow, a decent nutrient diet and non-nutrient soil will not give nute burn and in the right conditons will give maximum yield without anything organic introduced. in fact usually it is a bad thing introducing "variable" non fully controlable organic compounds/organisms can cause imbalances.

Im not totally against it obviusly, but do you have anymore proof on these organisms producing exactly what marijuana needs with a full nutrient diet that we are told gives marijuana plants EXACTLY what they need for maximum yield?

[PayDirt]

karmeron and dmahny88,


Answering your posts:

this is great. to bad with the whole disaster plan you had. Guess thats how it goes when ur business partners are stoners heheh
your words about our hobby's ignorance to a lot of soil aspects kind of shocked me. I joined this site and couldn't for the life of me find out why there was nobody out there spreading mycorr. habits/techniques for soil around much on online forums (the real indoor soil farmers don't get internet??).
ok my 2 cents.

I agree... if you supply light; CO2; and soluble nutrients in gross excess (as most indoor growers do), then soil becomes the limiting factor. Why it is so overlooked by â??tomatoâ?� growers is beyond me.


I think you need to re-asess how you tend to "learn" about your soil's ability. Why not be more lofty in your goals. You should be looking deeper into your results and be deciding/or figuring more out about cannabis' specific needs in your soil. Ok or not so lofty(but still good):

This will be my last experiment with â??tomatoâ?� growers... I'm hoping to develop a product for use in pharmaceutical botanic research. Ireland produces approximately 70% of all of Europe's pharmaceuticals and hosts a huge amount of pharmacological/organic chemistry research.

The biggest area of research at the moment is the exotic organic compounds, most of which are considered â??Nature's cupboardâ?� ie: they are too complex to build from scratch in the lab and are better sourced from plants. So big-business chemical companies with very deep pockets are busily growing all sorts of weird plants with an eye to maximising the yield of very complicated phytochemicals.

There's money to be made there, as cost is no impediment to increased yield under such circumstances. Despite its precarious legal standing, cannabis just isn't expensive enough to justify the increased yields... my soil simply isnt a viable product for pot. Sorry.


what kind of chemical/disolved nutes can be added to what extent without hindering the plant? <--Thats a good question looking for a hypothesis

The increased absorbency allows the soil to hold a large amount of dissolved nutrients, they don't just pool in the water at the bottom of the pot as they would with regular soil.


Do "tomato" plants often do better with more [conc.] of vitamens/elements the better as a rule(w/o burn of course)?

Yes... that's the main difference between organic and mass produced vegetables.


your soil uses mycorrhizae as a very important factor; quick question, what is your choice of bacteria and how do you decide? Do you have just one bacteria type that you choose? and lastly,how would one learn more(online) on the overall process of creating organic, live, dirt like you have?

Mycorrhizae refers to the fungal root symbiotes... I use rhizobacteria. Rhizobcteria produce the more complex organic molecules which are preferentially absorbed by the roots over the plain raw nutrients, and this negates the need for the plant to do this metabolism.

For example: Kellogg's add iron filings (small quantities) to corn flakes so they can sell them as â??enriched with ironâ?�. But the iron is either elemental iron: [Fe] or iron oxide (rust) [FeO2.6H2O]... which then has to be converted to heme iron for your muscles and blood... eat a steak and the iron is already in heme form. Guess which form is better absorbed? Guess which metabolism is healthier: one supplied with raw nutrients, or one supplied with nutrients already in their biologically available form?

A biologically active soil processes raw nutrients into more bioavailable organic compounds of those nutriets.

The best way to do this is simply to collect lots of rhizobacterial samples and brew them up in a sample of your soil. That way the strains best suited to survive in your soil win out, but with minority populations of all sorts of differently suited cultures jostling for opportunity (which gives the soil great flexibility to adapt to changing conditions).

The problem is multiplying the microscopic surface area to such an extent that the soil can support massively elevated levels of rhizobaceria... I managed to do this with a specially processed inert substrate which, in and of itself, is a predigested plant nutrient. Pretty clever.

Just a little thought

If this soil has some naturaly occuring NPK and im putting in just enough to get the best yield, then your added NPK will be too much??

The naturally occuring NPK in the soil is in organic forms produced by the rhizobacteria... not the soluble chemical versions.

you keep talking about nute burn.... but I can honestly say as a grower and from talking to a lot of growers, this is not an issue, if you follow very carefully the guidelines that manufacturers give there is no nute burn. Most nutes are desigend to give th plant exactly the nutrients they need to give the best yields as proven by LOTS of tests. So I dont really see the major benifit of this, because if plants are given exactly what they need and then the "organisms" in your soil are producing more NPK that will be too much?

Those manufacturers use cetain assumptions when making their nutrient solutions... they assume normal soil absorbency; they assume normal nutrient profiles in the soil; they assume most growers are not growing so intensively as to be risking nute burn in the first place.

The testing you mention is done against other soluble nutrients... soluble nutrient solutions don't include ANY insoluble nutrients (colloiding insoluble nutrients is cost prohibitive).

Do your soluble nutes include all the obscure trace nutrients needed to produce the myriad enzymes involved in optimizing plant metabolism?

All the metals? (Lithium; sodium; magnesium; calcium; vanadium; chromium; manganese; iron; copper; zinc etc)

All the non-metals? (Boron; carbon; silicon; selenium; bromine; chlorine etc)

If these things aren't in your soluble nutrients (they aren't), it's hardly â??exactly what they needâ?�...your plants are taking all these trace minerals from your soil. Wouldn't they do better if these minerals were in organic bioavailable forms in an absorbent engineered soil?


Also you mentioned about if you fed a human starch then they would be huge but not healthy, however, if you were harvesting a human for say fat, then you whould probably be getting as much of that out of them as u can, I havent really been shown that cannabis plants specifically need a lot of a micro nutrient to produce more "buds". most, if not all of the micro nutrients are in manufactured nutes, like "supervit" for example.

...You're NOT harvesting a simple organic compound, you're harvesting a complex metabolically costly molecule.

A better analogy would be the yield of testosterone (a complex five-ring steroid) from starch-fed Americans... only healthy; properly nourished people have upper-end testosterone levels. Most obese, manourished (not under-norished, bt poory nourished) have such suppressed testosterone leves as to require anti-depressants.


At the end of the day a grower only really needs yeild of "buds" with good THC and CBD, not really anything else. so leaf and stem production is secondary importance, so technically a marijuana plant grown witth crap leaves/stems, but amazing buds is "unhealthy". But its what growers grow for.

Wrong. They should be growing for optimized plant metabolism: high yields of ALL the cannabinoids; and the cross-linking of cannabinoids that so greatly increases potency are secondary to proper plant metabolism. The healthier the plant the better the yield; the better the quality.


I maybe way off but I just dont see the major issue. Usually in a non-organic grow, a decent nutrient diet and non-nutrient soil will not give nute burn and in the right conditons will give maximum yield without anything organic introduced. in fact usually it is a bad thing introducing "variable" non fully controlable organic compounds/organisms can cause imbalances.

It gives HIGH yield, not maximum yield... minor mineral deficiencies hinder optimum metabolism. Maximum (quality) yield requires optimum metabolism.


Im not totally against it obviusly, but do you have anymore proof on these organisms producing exactly what marijuana needs with a full nutrient diet that we are told gives marijuana plants EXACTLY what they need for maximum yield?

...I know you're not totally against it, you sent me an email asking for ten pots worth.

But this is pretty simple really... you guys are growing with excess light; CO2; and soluble nutrients. So soil is your limiting factor.

Improve your soil... read up on rhizobacteria and the benefits of absorbent substrates.

Check out the pics "liblah" posted on RollItUp:
ATTENTION: Irish "Tomato" Growers! - Page 4 - Marijuana Growing

...his plants seem very healthy: bigger than usual leaves and an unusual colour (hopefully extra chlorophyll).

*************************************************

More succinct, one-line questons from now on please.

-PayDirt

[karmeron]

To be honest this sounds like the age-old debate of organic v/s non-organic grows. in which no one has solidly proven that an organic grow is in fact any better than a non-organic grow.

"some" people say organic weed tastes better, but it is inconclusive. Look at hydroponic and aeroponic grows....(which have proven to give even higher yields than soil grows when done properly) this proves you dont even need soil at all to grow marijuana, so it is not necessarily the soil holding you back, only..possibly in soil grows.

What I owuld like to know is, what difference does naturally occuring micro-nutrients have over non-organic nutrients to the end product of weed, after all people smoke it, what would we expect the difference of it to be if grown with organic micro-nutrients coming from these rhizobacteria? I can certainly see how it would be viable for food and pharmaceuticals as you have mentioned about the iron in cereals thats added, but at the end of the day this is a product that people "mostly" smoke, and a lot of the chemicals in marijuana are probably destroyed in the process that arent needed to "get high".

[PayDirt]

Good points karmeron.


But lets talk turkey here...

Hydroponic beats soil; aerponic beats soil... but what about soil plus nutes?


Soil plus nutes beats nutes only (whether hydoponic or aerponic): because the soil provides the insoluble nutrients the solution doesn't. Provided the soil is absorbent and properly engineered: milled and cultured. You get more of the exotic cannabinoids and more cross-linking.

But you can't do this half-assed... a shitty organic grow can't beat plain old intensive farming. Only a quality organic grow can increase quality sufficiently to justify the effort.

The Japanese have pioneered proper organic growing with their "food-factories": organically grown vegetables mass-produced under clean-room conditions with no pesticides; fertilisers; or chemicals.
Plant Factories – The Future of Food
...and they usually use an engineered artificial soil instead of hydroponics.



If you want a bag (I have three left) and live near Dublin, email me some proof of your growing competence (pics/grow-log) with a rough location (just a town name)... I'll drop-off a bag somewhere nearby and email you the GPS location. Pick it up at your convenience.

Once you're willing to follow the instructions and report back your results, you can do your very own comparison grow.


-PayDirt

[dmahny88]

Listen. There a lot of people out there who do not grow for profit so when you said:
Despite its precarious legal standing, cannabis just isn't expensive enough to justify the increased yields... my soil simply isnt a viable product for pot. Sorry.

I was shocked, again. How could there not be people out there trying to AMP up their organics and figuring out what gets the best mycorrhizae interaction with the plant?
So is the specific product you have in mind creating for "tomatoes?" or are you doing this plant test b/c weed can be tested easily for it's final enzyme productions at chop? Just curious because it would be pretty crazy if a large scale bio-engineering company was trying to develop a weed-specific organic soil to produce for pharmaceuticals..
so how hard would this digested plant nutrient stuff be to make? tools? time? care? or is it just because you have some crazy cool skill in making good dirt?!?

[PayDirt]

dmahny88,

So is the specific product you have in mind creating for "tomatoes?"

...nope. It's a multipurpose/general-use soil, absorbent and inert with a neutral (7) ph. That way it can be acidified; alkalinated; dried or steeped as needed.

For example; the grower on RollItUp ("liblah") already has good results, healthy plants that are unusally green and large leaved; however, the grower on this forum (can't post his username without permission) didn't use any worms and found that the soil solidified... stifling the roots and somewhat stunting his plants. I've recommended he add lots of worms and a little moss peat to improve aeration. Hopefully this will rectify the situation.

The soil doesn't contain nutrients specific to one particlar plant strain, instead it contains an excess of all the trace minerals/nutrients in inert (but bioavailable) forms.


...or are you doing this plant test b/c weed can be tested easily for it's final enzyme productions at chop?

...yep.

Asking a competent pot smoker/grower for a yield and toke-test result only costs me my time (processing/delivering) and the price of the raw materials (just over 115 euro per plant bag when I bought the bulk materials two years ago).

If I used ordinary tomatoes, I'd have to grow them myself (I have no interest in gardening nor do I have any expertise), then pay thousands and thousands for lab tests (a lycopene yield and lycopene ratio would probably suffice, but a full vitamin/mineral panel might be required: that's big money).

If you guys get a high yield (analagous to the lycopene test), and an unusual high... then I know the plants are enhanced: more of the exotic cannabinoids and more cross-linking.

Cheaper, faster and you guys grow out of season. All the amateur gardeners I spoke to earlier in the year gave me the run around till long past planting season.


Just curious because it would be pretty crazy if a large scale bio-engineering company was trying to develop a weed-specific organic soil to produce for pharmaceuticals..

...no, they farm out the growing and pay handsomely for high yield crops (they are after chemicals they can't fabricate in the lab). Even some perfume companies do this.

The specialist growers are the ones interested in engineered soils, many even use their own recipes. They prefer general-use performance soils as they don't always want to disclose what they've been contracted to grow.

Very few species are grown in the lab (ie: desert/jungle varieties and potent hallucinogenics/poisons).


so how hard would this digested plant nutrient stuff be to make? tools? time? care? or is it just because you have some crazy cool skill in making good dirt?!?

It takes me two weeks to produce a batch of soil: one (labour intensive) day to process and mix the ingredients and thirteen to fifteen days to brew/multiply the bacteria.

It's not that hard once you have the equipment and the know how... but there are some proprietary secrets involved.


I start wth a base soil: nothing exotic, just a high quality compost but milled to a specific particulate size (I burnt out my milling machines motor making these nine bags so my whole operation is out of business till I can source some replacement parts).

Next I add the predigested nutrient substrate (trade secret) which provides both the soils absorbency and a microstructure to which rhizobaceria can adhere. Processing the substrate is more tricky as it involes a (slight) risk of combustion because it must be processed in an anhydrous state.

Once mixed with the soil it is no longer flammable.

Then I add the bacterial cultures (you need several to give the soil some adaptive potential).

Lock it up and brew the bacteria for a couple of weeks (when the smell changes the bacteria have reached saturation). This is just a matter of babysitting.


Just one corner of your garage will house all the equipment you need. The hard part is building up a proper collection of bacteria... you need samples from rich organic waste that has decayed in aerobic and anaerobic; warm and cool; acidic and alkaline conditions and all the variations of which you can manage.

I would warn any amateurs out there though, fermented or decayed sewage is rife with very viruent moulds and fungi... get sloppy and you'll get a nasty infection (or possibly a lung disease).


-PayDirt