CalPhos

This is an awesome product you can make from ingredients found in your kitchen. It is a nutrient solution for plants just entering the flowering cycle. There is an overlapping activity of Phosporous and Potassium during flowering. In natural farming, we apply calphos before the flower initiation to support the eventual fruit. In simplistic terms, we use Phosphorous to address the root system, which will enable the plant to access better water and nutrients from the soil to support the critical changeover as manifested by flower initiation. We use Calcium to strengthen the plant in preparation for heavy flowers/fruits. Thus, natural farming emphasizes Phosphorus and Calcium during the changeover period from growing to flowering/fruiting, and this provides for that need.

How to Make

1. Collect a bunch of eggshells and wash to remove inside filaments. Remember, you can also use bones and other good sources of calcium like seashells, clams and oysters, etc. Likewise, if you only want calcium, even limestone can be used, or simple lime, and even baking soda.
2. Pan fry the eggshells. Fry until some are brown/black, some white. The burnt shells are your Calcium source while the white are the Phosphorus source.
3. After roasting the eggshells, grind them up. You can do it manually, with a mortar and pestle, throw them in a blender or electric coffee grinder, etc.
4. Add them to a jar and add 5 parts vinegar by volume. For example, if you have 1 cup ground shells, add 5 cups vinegar.
   • The acid in the vinegar helps digest them. You will notice bubbling as this process converts the ingredients to liquid calcium phosphate.
5. Wait until tiny bubbles disappear
6. Seal the jar and ferment for 20 days.
7. Filter into another jar
8. Now you've made your own Calcium Phosphate

How to Use

Mix 1tbsp per 3L water

Plants

• spray on leaves during transition phase to flower, and when fruits are large and mature
  • Transition Phase: Induces flowering, eases nutrient demands of transition phase, strengthens flowers
  • Mature Fruit: Strengthens plant stems, leaves, fruits, helps fruit mature properly for optimum sweet flavor!

Homemade Fish Fertilizer

Fish fertilizer is an awesome product for promoting plant growth. It’s high in Nitrogen for growing plants, can be naturally produced, and is an awesome food for microbes! Fungi love this stuff. Fish fertilizer can be expensive in the store, but it is easily produced at home. This is a great recipe for making your own fish hydrolysate fertilizer. First lets look at the two main types of fish fertilizer:

Fish Emulsion

Fish emulsion fertilizer is made several different ways depending on who is making it. The important thing to know is that fish emulsion goes through two stages of processing. The first stage breaks down the fish parts using enzymes, proteases, or chemicals. Then, and this is the important part, heat is used to break it down further and allow oils and other things like amino acids to be more easily removed. It’s this second stage of processing that makes fish emulsion less advantageous than fish hydrolysate. Fish emulsion fertilizer lacks many oils and proteins that fish hydrolysate fertilizer has in abundance. So let’s look at that!

Fish Hydrolysate

Fish hydrolysate fertilizer generally starts out the same way as fish emulsion. It gets broken down using enzymes, proteases, or chemicals. However, fish hydryolysate doesn’t undergo the heating and skimming process that you get with the fish emulsion. The higher quality fish hydrolysates only undergo “cold-processing” which just means they are never heated enough to break down significant amino acid chains. Good fish hydrolysate also retains the fats and oils that microbes love!

Fertilizer Recipe

This method of making fish fertilizer is awesome because it is a cold process, chemical-free, completely organic way to make fish fertilizer right at home. While fish emulsion lacks beneficial ingredients vital to the final product, this fish hydrolysate recipe preserves all those active ingredients. You don’t want to miss out on those oils that microbes love. Try this recipe.

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How to make your own fish fertilizer:

1. Buy a Fish
2. Now, ideally you would throw the fish into a blender to mash it up into little pieces.  I cut my fish into 8ths or so and then chuck it into my kitchen blender but I’m a bit of a caveman.  If you’re squeamish, buy a separate blender for this, just make sure it is powerful enough, mine is 500W and works fine for small-medium size fishes.  Remember, the finer the fish bits, the more effective the fermentation.
3. Add water.  You can use a simple guide of 3:1 – 3 parts water to 1 part ferment material.  1 roughly 8in tilapia comes to about 500mL when ground up, so I add about 1500mL water.
4. If you are using a blender, blend up the mixture.  The water helps keep it loose so it blends much better after you add the water.
5. Add lacto bacilli to blended fish mixture.  I use 2tbsp per L.  You can use more or less if you want.  2tbsp/L is plenty though.
6. Add 1/3 parts sugar.  This should be 1/3 the amount of fish you’ve added.  Sugar will be either molasses or normal cane sugar.
7. If using sugar, the equivalency is about 1KG sugar = 1L solution.  So if you have 500mL like my tilapia, you want 1/3 of that in sugar.  You’d use about 167g sugar, or roughly ¾ cup.
8. I blend the whole mixture up a bit.  It’s good to have it as fine as possible.
9. Up to you how much you blend it, I blend until I don’t hear so many bones crunching in the blades of the blender.
10. Now you have liquefied fish, sugar, and lacto.  Pour this mixture into a container.  Loosely cover the container.  No need to seal, because the container will explode as CO2 is released by fermentation.  You just want to make sure other things don’t get into it.  I use a container with a lid and loosely screw the cap on top (just make sure you don’t seal it because it WILL explode).
11. The process takes anywhere from 3 weeks to over a month.  How do you know its finished?  By the smell.
12. You know when it’s done when there is no smell anymore.  During fermentation there is a nasty smell, but once completed, there will be almost no odor.  You can open it, and put your nose right up to it.  Take a whiff.  Nothing but a faint vinegar smell.  Now you know its done.  Congratulations!  You’ve made your own Fish Hydrolysate!
13. Now, usually I transfer it to a smaller container, usually just a smaller water bottle, just for convenience.  At this time, I use a strainer and a funnel to strain the bones and scales out of the hydrolysate.  But don’t expect a lot.  From a whole 8-10in tilapia, you will only get a little tiny pile of bones/scales.  They will feel kind of rubbery, not brittle.  Throw these in the compost pile or garden, they are excellent fertilizer and microbe food, already inoculated with microbes!
14. Leave the cap on the strained concoction loose until you see no more little bubbles forming.  Then cap it and store it for use as your own natural fertilizer.

How to use this fish fertilizer:

Mix 1tbsp/2L for applications.

 Plants

• Use as a soil drench as opposed to foliar spray.
• Inoculate compost to boost fungal population.  This is huge – major growth booster of fungus.
• Use in compost teas to boost fungal growth, add Nitrogen.  Use at ¼ strength for this application(1/2 tbsp per 4L).
• Mix in water when watering plants, as a natural fish fertilizer and to enhance populations of micro-organisms in the soil

TIP: ALWAYS USE NON-CHLORINATED WATER.  Chlorine kills microbes.  Simply let your chlorinated tap water sit for several hours, allowing the chlorine to dissipate.  I let it sit overnight generally.

TIP:  Try not to use cane sugar since it is chemically bleached.  Raw(unrefined) sugar like muscovado is best.  In the Philippines we use molasses because it is cheap, but any glucose source works – syrup, honey, etc.  Just use whatever is cheap.  Glucose gives microbes energy.  Whatever you have access to cheaply, go for it.

Coffee Grounds

Hi Everyone
Lately i have been trying out new ways to feed my ladies naturally. I found a that just normal coffee grounds are a great source for that. 
So dont through out your ground reuse them , add them to your soil mixes , make teas or just simply add it to the top of your pots. 
Another benefit of this is that ants hate coffee grounds as when they eat them they dies or mx the grounds with cinnamon and you will have a three fold solution , what i mean by that is .
You will get the benefits of the grounds for your ladies , the grounds will help keep ants at bay and finally if you add a bit of cinnamon you will keep the gnat flies away as well ( cinnamon is poison to ants as well)

Taken from MP forums:
Yes they are excellent choices as organic fertilizers. If you use them, use less or no synthetic (commercial) fertilizers. Since coffee grounds lack phosphorus (the key ingredience in fertilizers for flowering plants) it is better on non-flowering shrubs, foliage plants and grass than flowers. However, if used in combination with phosphorus (e.g. super phosphate or rock phosphate) it is excellent -- and cheap. You can buy super phosphate and rock phosphate at garden centers and home improvement centers.

Used coffee grounds contain about two percent nitrogen, about a third of a percent of phosphoric acid, and one percent potash; DRY WEIGHT. If you could buy coffee grounds in bags at garden centers the 3 numbers on the bag would be 2-0.33-1

It is not particularily "slow release" as typical of most organic fertilizers. Most of the nitrogen will be available pretty fast. This means you have to watch out not applying too high quantities at one time, and that more then one application during the growing season may be needed but in smaller volumes at a time.

Analysis of coffee grounds also shows that they contain many minerals, including trace minerals and carbohydrates. This makes it a good fertilizer.

Since coffee grounds are acidic they are particularly useful on those plants for which you would purchase and apply an “acid food,” such as blueberries, evergreens, azaleas, roses, camellias, etc. They would not be ideal around plants like lupins which require a sweet soil. If your soil is naturally alkaline (e.g. pH higher than 7.0) using coffee grounds is extra beneficial.

Since coffee grounds tend to get moldy, they should be incorperated into the soil, or dried and used as mulch.
If you have problems with too high pH, the use of coffee grounds are a good solution.

You can also dilute the grounds with water, and water the plants with the "tea" created. This is a good way to get plants growing immediately. Just avoid using around very small seedlings as it can burn the young plants. for established plants it is great.

Dose:
use about 6 table spoons per plant dug in near the roots, or in pots. You can also mix in a 1/4 - 1/2" layer and mix it in thoroughly in the top of the soil. The coffee grounds will help aerate the soil and provide nitrogen and potash to the plants. The phosphorus, should be added seperately, however, such as rock phosphate (0-4-0) or super phosphate (0-20-0) available at garden centers.

Nug Shots

Hi Everyone 
I have been growing out Skunk x Haze Auto's for a local breeder and i must say its a wonderfull strain, Needs a little work on getting a uniform height but the smoke is out of this world

Thought i would share my sunday smoke with you guys , nice and sticky

Kelp

Kelp is any of a variety of large, brown seaweeds 
that grow underwater and on rocky shores. Kelps are 
found in cold waters throughout the world.

Kelps vary widely in size and form. One type of kelp, 
called giant kelp, may have hundreds of branches, each 
of which has hundreds of leaves. Giant kelp may reach 
over 200 feet in length and will create entire forests 
of kelp. Other kelp consists of only a single branch 
and may be less than 3 feet long. But what they all 
share is that it is hard to tell the stems from the leaves.

The role of kelp in agriculture dates back thousands of 
years, and has been an integral part of coastal farming. 
It can be said with honesty that kelp is the most effective 
additive next to quality fertilizer.

The kelp that has the most importance for our needs is a 
kelp that grows in the cold canadian waters of the Atlantic 
Ocean, it is called Ascophyllum Nodosum. There are many kelps 
that have great benefits for agriculture but this particular 
kelp has the gold medal.

Ascophyllum is harvested by collecting from either the rocky 
shores or using a type of dredge or seine to catch it. It is 
then washed with fresh water to rid it of excess sea salt and 
then it is dried and powdered. It is very important that they 
harvest it at just the right time to ensure that the cytokinin 
levels are at their peak (cytokinins are growth hormones 
responsible for cell division in plants).

Kelp contains many wonderful things such as over 70 minerals 
and trace elements, growth hormones, vitamins, enzymes, and proteins.

It has been proven that kelp or what is in kelp can accelerate growth, 
increase fruiting and flowering, provide resistance to disease, insects 
and frost. There are a couple of things that are important in regards 
to the benefits of kelp and how they work. The first one is all of the 
trace elements and minerals which are aided by a carbohydrate mannitol 
that chelates or makes available certain minerals. One of the problems 
of modern farming is enabling the plant to take up all of the nutrients 
to complete a healthy life cycle. Chelates are very important in 
allowing plants to take up certain essential elements. What researchers 
have discovered is that with so many trace elements and minerals as 
well as vitamins and enzymes not to mention growth hormones, kelp 
aids in building and or supporting the plants natural immune system. 
If you can keep a plants immune system high it will have the ability 
to resist disease, insects, frost, and drought.

The second important and perhaps the most important aspect of kelp 
is the growth hormones. Kelp contains ample quantities of auxins, 
gibberellins, and cytokinins. All growth hormones play a part in 
how a plant functions, and are more accurately called growth 
regulators. Kelp has very high amounts of a particular hormone, 
cytokinin. Cytokinins are responsible for cell division, cell 
enlargement, differentiation of cells, development of chloroplasts 
as well as a delay in aging.

When kelp is used regularly you will notice that the overall health 
of the plant will increase and that when applied at certain times 
major growth will occur.

There are many ways to use kelp with foliar spraying being the most 
effective. You can improve specific growth stages by applying kelp 
with a specific response in mind. For example, if your tomatoes or 
peas are starting to bud, you can apply kelp to promote additional 
buds. If you require more root growth then you would apply it to 
the root zone after transplanting. Cytokinins respond within what 
ever stage that the plant is in. Spray in vegetative then you will 
experience more vegetative growth, spray in flower then you will 
experience more flowering etc...

There are several forms that kelp comes in and some forms offer 
more benefits than others. Granular kelp is often mixed in with 
other fertilizers and doesn't contain as high concentrations of 
ytokinins as liquid concentrate. If you are looking to supplement 
your present fertilizer regime then you would probably add 
powdered kelp. If however you are trying to promote more 
flowering or budding sites then you would use a concentrated 
liquid kelp product such as Growth Max or Growth Plus which 
both have a cytokinin level of 400 ppm.

Foliar spraying is the most effective way of applying kelp, 
since leaves are up to 8 times more effecient in taking in of 
nutrients than through the root system. When foliar spraying 
try to apply in the early morning when the plant is the most 
active and the stomata are open to their fullest, avoid 
praying before it rains, use high quality water with a ph 
of 6.0, and any foliar spray benefits from a non ionic wetting 
agent such as Mega Wet.

In conclusion, kelp can help germinate seeds quicker, improve 
taking of cuttings, encourage rooting, build immunity, add more 
colour and flavour, give a longer shelf life, produce more and 
larger buds and flowers, counter any nutrient defiencies, 
and fight off insects and disease. Kelp is truly mother natures 
gift to the modern gardener.