2019 - The Farm

TrentL · Feb 21, 2019

Cleaned dollar general out of 30 gal tubs

Busted up some coco

Mixed in some goodies

Got me some potting soil

Moruga x reapers

Carolina reapers

Scotch bonnets, habaneros, misc other stuff, small batches of butch-t and primos for soil testing

TrentL · Feb 21, 2019

Couple tons of worm shit.

Ruid · Feb 21, 2019

TrentL said:
Getting ready for a snowy weekend.

That's CBD hemp, Lifter strain. No THC, doesn't get you stoned, but sure helps my joint pain!

Marijuana that doesn't get you stoned is what I'd consider joint pain.

TrentL · Feb 22, 2019

Ruid said:
Marijuana that doesn't get you stoned is what I'd consider joint pain.

Not me, THC makes me so unbelievably paranoid and introspective. Something about my brain chemistry don't get along with it. (Maybe after I retire some day and I'm not living in a pressure cooker of stress, things will be different?)

CBD mellows me out though. Stress goes away and I can focus on an immediate problem without being distracted by 200 other things.

Last weekend I didn't smoke any CBD - by Tuesday my back pain was so intense I had to give in. I had to give myself a reprieve, was building up a tolerance to it and it was becoming less effective. Re-continued my nightly tokes Tuesday night and feel much better. All the pain is under control once again...

I guess I'll have to take a few days off each month just to reset the anti-inflammatory effect, since the body builds a tolerance to CBD over time.

PaulG · Feb 22, 2019

Wow

Mechanized :eek:

Awesome

That's the way to bust up coco and mix soil, Trent.
Makes my shovel and wheelbarrow seem sort of rustic!

PtMD989 · Feb 22, 2019

How’s Grandma doing? Good thing you caught the water issues sooner than later. Do you expect any high humidity problems in the farm grow room this year?

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TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

http://thehotpepper.com/topic/67036-2018-the-farm/?p=1534005

^ All of that soil from last year has now been used. It's growing plants great. It was so "hot" it needed a year of rest evidently. So the remains of the soil that killed 100+ dead plants from last year are now in play as G1, G2, G3 mixes (G=graveyard).

Also the 1 year old sole survivor of that soil last year, that I lopped off and repotted is rebounding

(It was repotted in to graveyard dirt from last year because I'm a bastard like that)

TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

PtMD989 said:
How’s Grandma doing? Good thing you caught the water issues sooner than later. Do you expect any high humidity problems in the farm grow room this year?

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No big change w/ grandma.

We're gonna take the time this year to do more controlled top-watering until the plants get so bushy that it becomes difficult to manage, or there's simply not enough time, then we'll do bottom watering. But I want to try to avoid dumping 200 gallons of water in tables indoors as long as possible.

The high tunnel will help us move plants out earlier this year, by april 1st everything should be outdoors. Many things will get germinated out in the high tunnel. Even going to try starting some peppers out there. (Not risking all of them on a gamble but i'll start a couple hundred direct in 4" pots out there)

TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

PaulG said:
Wow

Mechanized

Awesome

That's the way to bust up coco and mix soil, Trent.
Makes my shovel and wheelbarrow seem sort of rustic!

Dude I'm a bit worried.

Mix A and B this year have proven fatal to plants... and Mix A was identical to the mix I used last year on everything. I don't know what in the hell changed, but after 12 days I had 100% of the plants put in Mix A and B die on me. Was only about 20 plants each, but still, worrisome. That's why I used last year's graveyard dirt for the first bulk pot-up of reapers, moruga x reapers, MOA scotch bonnets, and Big Sun Habanero - I don't quite yet have a workable soil mix.

Mix C is showing problems but I think the well water skewed the results on that, as I didn't have a control at home. I also did a 1/2 strength mix C just to see.

Mix D, E, F each eliminated one of the major components of Mix A-C so I could isolate out if there was a specific problem, if one of the additives has "gone bad" somehow.

The plants are healthy right up until they shrivel up and die, they grow fast, but the roots are destroyed, brown and brittle, when I de-pot the dead/dying to inspect. Get a whiff of ammonia so I think the blood meal is cooking off.

The first "BIG BATCH" above had 13.0 lbs of fertilizer added to the 1 cu yard mix - 5 lbs of blood meal, 2.5 lbs of kelp meal, and 5.5 lbs of fertoz rock phosphate pellets. I also added in 4.5 lbs of azomite for trace elements. IF I did my math right, and that's a REALLY big IF, this mix should be a bit weaker than the latest test mixes I did. If I did my "cup to weight" conversions properly (.45 lb per cup of blood meal, etc) when I ran the numbers it showed I was using 20 lbs of fertilizer per cubic yard for mixes D, E, F, equivalent (29 w/ azomite figured in, at the ratio of the test mixes).

The toxic mix A (which is what I used *last* year, and it worked OK) was 28.5 lbs / cu yd equivalent. Many established organic mixes call for 15 lbs of fertilizer total per cu yd, so I was nearly 2x heavy on fertilizers.

So goal is to cut it back and see how plants do. Worst case is I have to make extra 5-1-1 fish emulsion runs (which blows any $$ saving on fertilizer as now it gets dumped in to labor metering out a liquid fert). We went through about $200 of fish emulsion last year, but the labor involved sucked, as I couldn't pipe it through irrigation. (Fish hydrolysate can be piped, but it's much weaker than fish emulsion.) It takes about 10 man hours to hand-meter a fertilizer run in 3200 potted plants; this year we'll have at least 2x that...

this is basically what I mixed up for the first cubic yard;

As you can see the total amount of dry fertilizer is only 13 lbs, which is much, much weaker.

Also, costs $1500 less to go that route over the course of the grow.. if it works?

TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

I think this will be my next test mix;

I added in some $$$$ amounts for savings vs. hand mixing and savings vs. commercial potting soil (saves $11,000 over commercial soil to mix my own, organic potting soil runs about $30/2 cu ft)

PtMD989 · Feb 23, 2019

Could it be that the components or ingredients that you got for this years mixes, are not the exact same strength as last years ingredients? I’m just throwing stuff up against the wall here.

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TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

That gives me an aggregate of macro and micros based on what I change, as far as the fertilizer mix goes.

(Keep in mind that % is of the X lbs of fertilizer I add, so quite a bit different than if you are doing liquid fertilizer, you don't want a dry mix too strong)

TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

PtMD989 said:
Could it be that the components or ingredients that you got for this years mixes, are not the exact same strength as last years ingredients? I’m just throwing stuff up against the wall here.

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I'm using the same bags as last year still (50 pounds of dry ferts goes a LONG frigging way in potting soil..)

I *think* it's because I'm potting up a little earlier this year (plant maturity wise) - the mix is too strong for seedlings, whereas last year it worked on slightly more mature plants. A weeks difference makes a HUGE difference in root development and plant sturdiness.

The newer, weaker mixes should help, if that's the case. if not, I've got something else going badly wrong..

TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

Think I figured it out. I doubled the amount of azomite compared to last year in those early tests (mix A & B), re-checked my notes and I doubled the # of cups per batch this year on the early tests.

That's significant because azomite is 11% aluminum oxide, which in toxic quanitites .. kills roots and causes calcium deficiency, both of which I've seen.

I didn't even pick up on it until I ran the earlier soil test #'s through that spreadsheet!

TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

So this is re-calibrated for correct weights per cup (weighed out a cup of each fertilizer to get weight). That lets me properly calc weight by cu yd of my old mixes.

Did a full baseline of all of last year's stuff, calibrated to lbs./ cubic yard, and compared to this year's mixes so far

Also shows my memory is faulty as Mix N was what worked last year so well (as well as O and P which upped phosphorous), and I thought the 2019 A mix was the same, not even remotely close.

This is why we take detailed notes!!!!

Pepper-Guru · Feb 23, 2019

TrentL said:
So this is re-calibrated for correct weights per cup (weighed out a cup of each fertilizer to get weight). That lets me properly calc weight by cu yd of my old mixes.

Did a full baseline of all of last year's stuff, calibrated to lbs./ cubic yard, and compared to this year's mixes so far

Also shows my memory is faulty as Mix N was what worked last year so well (as well as O and P which upped phosphorous), and I thought the 2019 A mix was the same, not even remotely close.

This is why we take detailed notes!!!!

Awesome record keeping there. My wife is an excel Guru I should make her create something like this for me! Thanks for sharing!

TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

Pepper-Guru said:
Awesome record keeping there. My wife is an excel Guru I should make her create something like this for me! Thanks for sharing!

Had to look around the house for an hour to try to find the damn notebook. I'd started recording notes in it for another project after the season was over last year, and it got misplaced. So.. Not THAT great at keeping records.

Last year the big revelation was "kelp meal cooks off"

The soil which was 100% fatal to plants in 2018, that I'd saved in bins, is kicking ass and taking names this year. So I could mix up some pretty potent shit and let it sit for a year (add myco, and let burn...) if I wanted to and have next year's grow ready to rock. Although.. not sure where exactly I'd store 33 cubic YARDS of soil..

I need to do studies on "fatality by soil rest time" or something. This is the exact opposite problem you have with conventional potting soil, where slow release chemical ferts in outdoor stored damp bags can release during storage and nute-burn your plants on transplant. (Miracle grow got me once, the bags had been kept outside at the big box store where I got them, and were from last year's surplus, since evidently I'm the only one in the area who plants stuff in January around here.. lol)

If I'm someday going to sell this potting soil mix, I'll need to know how long I have to let it rest before shipping, to let the kelp meal cook off.

On mixes D, E, F this year, there's very little appreciable growth up top (roots are growing fast tho) - there's not much available nitrogen, yet. But as the kelp meal cooks off (hopefully not lethally so) and the blood meal is converted by the myco and bacteria introduced from the worm castings, there should be more available. So I have about 1% available nitrogen, from worm castings, which comprise 14.2% of my soil mix by volume. Hopefully that'll be enough to keep them alive and kicking until the blood meal / kelp meal kicks in.

Same goal this year as last year - try to find an organic potting soil mix based on coir which does NOT require additional fertilizers for 3 months.

Last year so much labor time was spent giving them metered doses of fish emulsion every 2 weeks, was a real pain in the ass. Can't keep that up as I scale this out further. If I have to provide supplemental fertilizer on a per-pot basis this year it will create about 40 man hours of work each week, with the volume of stuff we are starting in the high tunnels.

Walchit · Feb 23, 2019

How much do those pallets of worm shit cost?

sinensis · Feb 23, 2019

TrentL said:
Mixed in some goodies

so awesome

manual mixing with a shovel on tarps sucks arse

TrentL · Feb 23, 2019

Walchit said:
How much do those pallets of worm shit cost?

700 bucks each (1 ton)

Works out to 35 cents a pound, which is a lot less than the $1+ you'll pay getting 30 lb bags.

Downside is. you gotta get 2 tons to get that price break.. Lucky for me the projected requirement of it this year is 2.15 tons so I might run a little short?