Plant Alchemy With KNF: Korean Natural Farming And Jadam

[Azimuth]

Have you ever considered high brix growing?

No, not really interested in buying a kit of stuff, but haven't really looked into it enough to see if it's viable to source stuff on my own. From what I gather it's a lot of high mineral type soil, mostly calcium I'd suspect.

What is the basic concept?

 

[Gee64]

I wouldn't buy anything. What I meant was if you figure out how to raise brix, then find your own ingredients as you are doing now, your bugs will go away.

Gimme a day or 2 and I'll write up a summary for you. 1st you need to use your refractometer to see where your at and what your calcium line looks like, then go from there.

 

[Azimuth]

Ok, thanks. Happy to explore new territory.

 

[Gee64]

Ok so what brix really is, is sugar content in the plants sap, and sugar comes from photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis requires light so this is all based on the plant being supplied with good light, so I won't include light in the equation, I will assume that enough is being used. I am also assuming that the environment for growing conditions is optimal. That leaves whats inside the pot.

Minerals are easy as contrary to popular belief, plants don't use a lot of them, so they are pretty easy to add in and I'm assuming you have a good balanced adequate supply of them.

So that leaves NPK and carbon, oxygen, calcium and microbial life. If you water properly with soil that has adequate drainage, oxygen is easy so lets take that off the list. Now we have NPK Ca and microbes.

N comes from organic matter and the atmosphere, again easy stuff and K comes from greensand kelp and fish ferts. More easy stuff so they are off the list.

Now we are down to the big 3. Phosphorus, Calcium, and Carbon.

Carbon comes from atmosphere in the form of CO2, so again, easy stuff.

So now we have the big 2. Calcium and phosphorus. Forget the fact that both are nutrients for a moment and look at their other purposes.

Calcium supplies electricity and your soil runs on electricity, Calcium is an electrolyte. The strongest one in soil.

Humans need electrolytes for the same reason, as we too run on electricity. Without electrolytes we die and so do soil microbes.

Athletes require larger amounts of electrolytes because their bodies work more, so they need more. Simple math.

For microbes to work more to produce all the food from all the above mentioned amendments, they too require more electricity. Again, simple math.

Calcium also conditions the soil to allow better air flow and water flow. Tilth. So you need lots of calcium relatively speaking. More than most are comfortable with.

Now the only thing left is Phosphorus. P is harder because it's so hard to mine.

P is a nutrient but again, lets explore what else it is. P is a dump truck.

It attracts nutrients very similar to a how a chelator does, but it doesn't tie them up like a chelator. It comes in from the soil with food stuck all over it, flows thru the plant and dumps its load, some P gets eaten, and the rest goes back to the soil filled with exudates to be eaten by the microbes, then reloaded by the microbes and cycles round and round endlessly.

Every day the plant grows so every day it eats more so every day it needs a few more dump trucks than it needed the day before. Again, simple math.

When P goes back to the soil it back hauls pure carbon in the form of exudates. The microbes love exudates. Its pure sugar, which is a pure form of carbon, so if you are bringing exudates to the microbes they will gladly mine the really hard to mine P in order to build more dump trucks.

This process goes round and round.

So every lap you need a few more microbes which require a little bit more electricity to mine a little bit more phosphorus to build a few more dump trucks to haul a few more nutrients to create more photosynthesis to create a few more exudates to backhaul a bit more sugar than the previous lap.

When you have done enough laps to create enough sugar being backhauled thru the plants vascular system to get it over 12% sugar 2 things happen.

1 is that the plant is too sweet for pests. They don't have pancreases to process sugar like we do so the excess sugar ferments in their blood turns to alcohol and kills them. They know this so they stay away.

The other thing that occurs is that the plant now has enough sugar to be as healthy as possible. It's immunities are jacked. So it functions better which in turn improves everything and the process starts to snowball. The acceleration causes acceleration.

You now have too much sugar so the microbes eat as much as possible and now what happened to the plant happens to the microbes. They become all they can be and the accelerated acceleration now gets accelerated again. The snowball rolls faster and grows.

All the excess sugar sits in the soil unused. It is now stored. It's called carbon sequestration. Sugar is carbon and you are taking CO2 out of the atmosphere, storing the Carbon in the soil, and releasing the O2 back to atmosphere.

So the trick is starting the process. You need to get the snowball rolling.

There are kits you can buy. We all know of the famous one, and they work fantastic but they are based around spraying calcium on the leaves to boost electrolytes. Foliar sprays.

And around feeding sugar to the microbes to boost them too.

It works well, but it's a hack and phosphorus gets mined to make more dump trucks but in a catch up role not a premeditated preemptive role, so you need to keep priming the pump with foliars and sugar teas to increase it.

I chose the natural way and sprout in flower soil. Used flower soil. All those stored exudates we just talked about are stored in that soil and there are dump trucks parked all over, so you get ahead of the curve and the snowball starts to roll on it's own from Day 1 of sprout.

Microbes are easy. Oxygen is easy.Calcium is easy. It's P that is hard, but once the dump trucks are rolling and filled with sugar P becomes easy as microbes love more dump trucks. They will build as many as it takes to constantly haul all their poop to the plant.

High brix is all about Oxygen, Carbon, Phosphorus, Calcium, and beneficial aerobic microbes.

So here is the really cool part. So cool and it's a free gift from a guy that loves to tell you things but in a very strange way. You must decipher his puzzling delivery.

It's from The Rev. His soil recipe in his 1st book IS a recipe for unlimited high brix.

By unlimited I mean that your brix just keeps climbing every lap. I regularly see 21 and 22, and my best so far is from an old school purple kush my buddy has perpetuated from clone since 1990 and it photosynthesizes better than any other plant I have seen. I got a 26 once with it.

Brix is strain dependant too, as some strains simply don't have it in their DNA to brix that high, they just can't photosynthesize enough, but they can all get to 18 no problem.

Nitrogen requires massive amounts of water to be assimilated and that much water chokes off air, so over nitrification crashes brix. When you hear or read that bugs love nitrogen, and plant tissue high in nitrogen attracts bugs, what it really means is bugs love low brix.

Synthetic fertilizers don't require soil biology so the plant won't produce exudates, resulting in high brix being impossible in a practical sense. Synthetics attract bugs.

In a lab with lots of costly inputs it can be done but it's hard and expensive, and will never snowball so it needs to be primed non stop.

Carbon, Phosphorus, Calcium, Oxygen, and microbes. When I say microbes I mean myco fungii too. You need both. Myco manages the microbes for the plant. Myco lives in the dark so it can't photosynthesize sugars, so the plant pays myco with sugar to manage the operation.

So look at Rev's recipes, then sub in your own home grown ingredients and see where it goes. That way you can get to high brix but stay your course to accomplish your goal.

If you have to prime the pump, and you will from time to time until you get good at it, have some KNF/Jadam primers ready.

Calcium boosters, soil sugars, and aerobic, not anaerobic microbe solutions. I use EWC for my microbe tea solutions.

Microbes are like earth worms. Once they fill the pot to their preferred population they become self regulating in population density so at that point you just need to make them stronger. Sugar does that.

So a soil primer of sugar will get the snowball rolling but you can't sugar your soil more than once in veg and once in flower or the microbes get lazy and stop mining P.

If you pour the sugar in then they don't need dump trucks and P crashes, then brix.

@Vegan4life has some tricks that would be right up your alley, and vica-versa. You 2 should talk. What you 2 do is above my pay grade but collectively I bet you could get that proverbial letter that we laughed about earlier sent to me quicker

 

[Azimuth]

Wow. Thanks Gee.

That makes more sense than I had thought about brix. I read the high brix thread and my reaction was basically, "they spray sugar on their leaves and then they measure the leaves and somehow magically find that the leaves are high in sugar." Well, duh.

But I see now that that's the jumpstart you're talking about but in their case because they're coming at it through the backdoor they have to continually supply it. It's kind of a forced brix level. Still high and gets the job done, but not really a natural process.

Kind of like synthetics as nutes. Gets the job done but you're doing to the plant rather than working with it or really just providing optimal conditions and getting out of the way to let it do its thing.

Your explanation makes me want to explore it more. Damn you. Another rabbit hole to drop into.

I'll have to think on this some. Lots of concepts that make sense when I read them but I don't fully understand the depths of it so I'll have to reread and reread to get it.

I'm wondering if I've stumbled into the neighborhood with the new top dressing I've recently started. I'm now regularly adding castings (ca and microbes), comfrey for NPK, s. nettle for the rest of the micronutrients esp cal, Mag and sulfur, as well as dried flowers (P) and Alfalfa (K) though I'm going to switch that out for pumpkin after this fall's harvest. And I see that The Rev suggests pumpkin seeds for K which might even be better than the rind itself, as well as malted barley for growth hormones and faster finishing.

The new topdress also has neem and karanja for bugs but maybe that's only needed in early veg until the snowball gets rolling.

I'm also thinking that as good as the SIP is at growing plants, maybe incorporating a wet/dry cycle with it might be beneficial. That one would be hard for me given the incredible difference those pots have made in my plants.

I don't keep the reservoir filled every day like some do. Rather I just give them what they'll drink in a day or two so maybe I'm already part way there.

Lots to roll around in my brain but if I can get a handle on it I'd like to.

 

[Gee64]

Wow. Thanks Gee.

That makes more sense than I had thought about brix. I read the high brix thread and my reaction was basically, "they spray sugar on their leaves and then they measure the leaves and somehow magically find that the leaves are high in sugar." Well, duh.

But I see now that that's the jumpstart you're talking about but in their case because they're coming at it through the backdoor they have to continually supply it. It's kind of a forced brix level. Still high and gets the job done, but not really a natural process.

Kind of like synthetics as nutes. Gets the job done but you're doing to the plant rather than working with it or really just providing optimal conditions and getting out of the way to let it do its thing.

I can't knock what Doc has done.

Is it a commercial model? sure it is, but it's a high brix product and it works really well. It's brix for those who just want to happily follow the instructions and you get a wicked good product without bugs.

It's no more costly that synthetics so it's not like he is gouging. It's good stuff.

And from what I see his support is top notch.

Your explanation makes me want to explore it more. Damn you. Another rabbit hole to drop into.

Wascally Wabbits! huhuhuhuhuh....

I'll have to think on this some. Lots of concepts that make sense when I read them but I don't fully understand the depths of it so I'll have to reread and reread to get it.

As you think on it watch Rabenberg's videos again. Soilworks LLC on youtube.

The long ones at the seminars where he uses the white board to tell what both plants and soil are made of.

Take notes or screen shots on the percentages of what good soil is and what a plant is made of.

Those are your goals for a good solid base.

I'm wondering if I've stumbled into the neighborhood with the new top dressing I've recently started. I've now just started to regularly adding castings (ca and microbes) as well as dried flowers (P) and Alfalfa (K) though I'm going to switch that out for pumpkin after this fall's harvest. And I see that The Rev suggests pumpkin seeds for K which might even be better than the rind itself.

I'm a plant based health junkie so trust me when I say, pumpkin is one of the best foods there is. If you don't believe me, trust your worms. Cut a slab and lay it in the bin and watch how quick it disappears.

The seeds are the prime part. Sprout them and harvest the sprouts and it's even better.

The new topdress also has neem and karanja for bugs but maybe that's only needed in early veg until the snowball gets rolling.

Bugs tend to leave young plants alone in organics as long as the soil isn't soggy.

I'm also thinking that as good as the SIP is at growing plants, maybe incorporating a wet/dry cycle with it might be beneficial. That one would be hard for me given the incredible difference those pots have made in my plants.

I haven't tried SIPS yet but I bet that if you filled your res via top watering good things would happen. Let it dry before refilling to avoid sludge. Thats how Rev does it.

I don't keep the reservoir filled every day like some do. Rather I just give them what they'll drink in a day or two so maybe I'm already part way there.

Lots to roll around in my brain but if I can get a handle on it I'd like to.

Talk with @Vegan4life. He knows nutrition and uses sprouts and such already. He had never heard of brix until I mentioned it and when he got a refractometer he found most of his ways were already turning high brix. The few plants he had that were just under 13 had bugs but nothing on the high brix plants in the same room beside the infested ones.

You and V4L share a lot of commonalities in your growing philosophies. I think you could learn from each other.

Thomas M. Dykstra .... look him up. He has info on what pests enjoy what brix levels.

Thrips means your close to high brix. I get them at 11-12 dropping down from high brix, and from what I have read they prefer a minimum of 9.

Also, if you get it all correct and brix still doesn't hit 13 or higher, your problem is usually one of the things I assumed, as in adequate light or proper environment or soggy soil.

You need to fix calcium 1st, so an analog refractometer, not the fancy digital ones, will tell you calciums state. Start there.

If the line that indicates your brix level in the refractometer is crisp then calcium is low, if it's fuzzy so you have to approximate what it reads, calcium is good.

Calcium needs to be fixed 1st or you don't have enough electricity and the microbes are sluggish and nothing will work. They need Gatorade to boost electrolyte. (Don't pour Gatorade in, that was a joke)

Analog refractometers are cheap. Usually about 25 dollars.

 

[Gee64]

Here is a good tip on soil moisture. Take a handful and squeeze it as hard as you can. Hold it for 10 seconds.

If a few drips come out it's perfect. If you get actual runoff, as in tablespoons of water, not just a few drips, like 4 or 5 drips max, its too wet.