Hi welcome
Yeah being a raccoon in the compost heap is a smelly affair so I’m happy you made the choice to jump out & post.
Not many talk about companion plants nowadays
Kinda like a lost art
Good to have you onboard

compostmike said:

Been lurking a bit and figured I should finally make an intro instead of just reading old threads like a raccoon in the compost pile.

I’m Mike. Went through ag science years back, then somehow got more interested in the dirt than the crop. These days I’m mostly into living soil, compost, cover crops, mulch layers, worms, fungal networks, and trying to make a garden act more like a small ecosystem than a production machine.

I’m not really a bottle-chart guy. Nothing against people doing what works for them, but I usually look at roots, drainage, organic matter, airflow, insects, and the general biology of the bed before I start blaming one missing element. Same patterns show up in tomatoes, peppers, orchard trees, pasture, cannabis, pretty much anything with roots. The plant usually tells you something, but the soil was talking first.

I mess around with mixed beds, companion plants, compost inputs, leaf mold, native plants, and whatever beneficial bugs decide to move in. Still learning like everyone else. Half the time the garden teaches better than the books did.

I’ll probably mostly be chiming in on soil, compost, outdoor growing, pest balance, root-zone issues, and organic methods. Not here to preach. Just like seeing plants grow in a system that makes biological sense.

Glad to be here.

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Nice to see someone else that is moving towards understanding a plant as a holobiont and not a seperated, isolated life form object. The plant is one part of a larger whole. Just like soil. You focus on soil, but water, air, gravity, sun, animals, sound/vibration, darkness, electromagnetism, chemistry, microbial life, moon, insects, are part of what makes up the plant (and soil) too. Right? The soil is a major part of the whole when fragmented away like that. Then fragmentation can seperate the soil into more parts. But the real coherence is to accept the whole that we can look at the parts if we want. Not isolated parts that we choose to view as can be making up something larger. It takes everything together to make up what our limited perception is taking in and being presented to the brain. The brain interprets that information and forms an image. That image isn't what information the senses brought in, it is just what thought has created. The plant in our thoughts isn't the plant itself, but just our thinking, which is very limited.

The books teach abstract knowledge, borrowed from someone else. Theories and concepts that are hypothetical you are expected believe. The experience of gardening is real knowing. Experiencing is the real teacher. You are right, the real teacher is better. Not just in gardening or agriculture though.

You noticed the soil speaks first in your observations. Perhaps if we had more sensitive senses or devices we could pick up subtle information from a plant itself that signals a change in the soil is happening, or even get subtle information that the plant is about to change or adjust the soil itself. Its easy to see a plant respond to changes in the photosythetic period, or composition of the soil, water... but there is so much going on beyond our limited knowledge and limited senses. The majority of that will remain unknown because of the limitation of the mind and the brain.

You know more about soil than I do. So it will be intersting to me and perhaps others if you made a topic to talk about it. I sometimes use companion plants as well. Basil and cannabis has an interesting relationship when they are together in the same soil. The soil is playing a role in plant intelligence and plant memory. The basil through chemical signals in the air, but also in the root zone seem to cause cannabis to react. Also I noticed Spearmint in isolated containers near and even touch cannabis doesn't seem to supress the growth or developed of cannabis with the chemical signals in the air like it can with other plants. Do you have some thoughts on this?

Welcome to the farm. Sounds like we have a very similar approach to gardening. Looking forward to seeing what your growing. And for the record I hate when raccoons get into my compost pile.

Companion planting seems to get treated like decoration now, but there’s a lot going on under that mulch if the system is alive enough.

@Gmix I agree, it does feel like a bit of a lost art. People will spend forever dialing a bottle schedule but not always think about what a clover strip, basil plant, yarrow patch, or living mulch is doing for insects, root exudates, moisture buffering, and soil cover.

@Afterburner I’m with you on the holobiont idea, at least in the practical sense. The plant is never just the plant. It’s roots, microbes, water movement, light cycle, air exchange, insects, neighboring roots, all of it pushing and pulling. With basil near cannabis, I’d be looking at volatile compounds above ground and root-zone signaling below ground. Same kind of thing you see in vegetable systems where basil changes pest pressure around tomatoes, but it’s not always a simple “repels X” story.

Spearmint is interesting because mints can be pretty aggressive chemically and physically, but if it’s isolated in its own container, you’ve removed a big part of that competition. The airborne compounds may still be there, but the cannabis roots aren’t sharing the same rhizosphere or fighting that spreading mint root mass. So I wouldn’t be shocked if it doesn’t suppress much unless the mint is actually in the same soil volume.

@orggrwr appreciate it. I’ll get some grow stuff up once I’ve got something worth showing. Mostly beds, compost, mulch, and watching who moves in before I start trying to “fix” everything.

compostmike said:

With basil near cannabis, I’d be looking at volatile compounds above ground and root-zone signaling below ground. Same kind of thing you see in vegetable systems where basil changes pest pressure around tomatoes, but it’s not always a simple “repels X” story.

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Absolutely. Love stories, friendships, and wars rage underground with the plants, and also chemically through the air. The air connects them and is a conduit for signaling that is far reaching. It seems more far reaching than the soil itself. Their communications and interactions are far too complex for human understanding. But what we can observe is pretty amazing. The reason I mentioned Basil is because I have observed that with cannabis that intermingles with basil, shares the same soil, has a better terpene content. More flavor, wider flavor. I'm just in the early stages of observation. No lab test, just my observations thus far. Noticing it with one true breeding cultivar. So its going to work with that one. I have yet to try it with others. So the hypothesis is that basil companion planting can be beneficial in slighlty boosting terpene production in some cultivars, perhaps most all. Don't really know.
Basil in bloom.

compostmike said:

Spearmint is interesting because mints can be pretty aggressive chemically and physically, but if it’s isolated in its own container, you’ve removed a big part of that competition. The airborne compounds may still be there, but the cannabis roots aren’t sharing the same rhizosphere or fighting that spreading mint root mass. So I wouldn’t be shocked if it doesn’t suppress much unless the mint is actually in the same soil volume.

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Right. I wasn't 100% sure it was soil excretion that supressed growth of other plants near Spearmint. The chemical signal is quite strong near the leaves and stem of spearmint. So placing the speatmint in very close proximity of the canbabis was just a test to see how they interacted through the air, and touching. I didn't really come to a conclusion but the Spearmint didn't seem to bother the cannabis. If I can I would like to take an IBL for its consistency and uniformity (Perfect tools for experimentation and learning) and try adding spearmint to the soil of one from the group and see what happens. Will it enhance like it did from Basil? Or will the Spearmint stunt the growth and development and possibly kill off the plant?

What companion plants are you thinking to be a good match for cannabis? I've been looking for more information on this myself. Next I'm going to be looking into the french marigolds.

I have spearmint that is very invasive once it's established. So is my rosemary and greek basil all self seeded.