Do it yourself (DIY) lentil root booster

[Eledin]

Hello I was preparing my germinated lenti root booster as I do every time for my seedlings and I decided to share with you guys how I do it. This is nothing new but something that many might not know, I didnt invent this. Now lets begin, first, what are auxins?

The Importance of Plant Auxins in Cannabis Growing

The Importance of Plant Auxins in Cannabis Growing

softsecrets.com

Here is a detailed explanation, for a tl;dr what you need to know is
"Plant auxins are hormones that guide plant growth and work in conjunction with, but in opposition to, cytokinins.
Both substances must be present in order to be effective, but the ratio determines if the net result is to either inhibit shoot growth and promote root growth - if the ratio is auxin-heavy - or promote shoot growth and inhibit root growth - if the ratio is cytokinin-heavy." From the link provided.
Okay now that you know, auxins are present in high numbers during germination (as the main focus of the seed is to develop a root) and lentils are a legum that wont cause as much fermentation and not as quickly as peas or beans and theyre milder in general. Lets go with the preparation.
1. Germinate 50 or100 grams of lentils (1 and a half oz or 3oz) per liter (1/4 - a quart of a gallon) of water youre gonna use to water your plants. With 100g you increase the risk of mold. This kind of mold is not harmful for the plant, its greenish and appears on the surface and will dissapear on its own, but if you wanna get rid of it because you think dont like it, just spray horsetail tea fermented for 2 days, 1 application will kill the mold. Germinate the lentils in paper until you see a nice healthy root in most of them and then seal them inside a bottle with water. After 1-2 days you should have cloudy water like this.

2. Save that water with a strainer, the less processed the better, that said to extract more auxins you will need to blend them.

3. Put them in new water as much as you think youll need to get a liquid blend like this

4. Use a cloth strainer to avoid adding the blended lentils

5. Add to the ammount of water you were planing to use and water your seedlings/small plants. They will focus on the roots first, and we all know that big roots lead to big buds!

DISLCAIMER: When you are adding auxins your plant will focus more on the roots and less on the vegetative growth so dont use this when your plant is looking to grow! If you are growing in a very small container there is no need for this as the plant has enough time to colonize the whole pot anyway. I plant germinated seeds in 5 gallon pots, so this is specially helpful for this instances or when you want to transplant quicker. There is no risk of overfertilization if you use 50/100g per liter.

 

[Raf]

followed your suggestion, added some things, good results:

I make etiolated seeds extract for auxin supllementation as follows: (post transplant, first weeks of flower).

-lentils and peas.
-sunflower seeds for tryptophan amino acid (auxin precursor).
-a little malted barley for chitin, cytokinines and enzymes.
-Rye starter, integral rye flour (1 tablespoon). (lactobacilli adn yeast).
-Barley extract for sugars, as a i have plenty (sourdough is my trade).


Then when boom starts i make cytokinine extract:

-Etiolated Maize and Squash seeds.
-Malted Barley.
-Moringa leafs (high potassium content and micros, also its full of cytokinines so be vigilant).

Hormones can be REALLY bad, if provided in excess, go carefully.

 

[Eledin]

followed your suggestion, added some things, good results:

I make etiolated seeds extract for auxin supllementation as follows: (post transplant, first weeks of flower).

-lentils and peas.
-sunflower seeds for tryptophan amino acid (auxin precursor).
-a little malted barley for chitin, cytokinines and enzymes.
-Rye starter, integral rye flour (1 tablespoon). (lactobacilli adn yeast).
-Barley extract for sugars, as a i have plenty (sourdough is my trade).


Then when boom starts i make cytokinine extract:

-Etiolated Maize and Squash seeds.
-Malted Barley.
-Moringa leafs (high potassium content and micros, also its full of cytokinines so be vigilant).

Hormones can be REALLY bad, if provided in excess, go carefully.

Thats great information! Thanks!
Atm I use my own light supersoil. The reason I do a light ammending is because I dont have acces to things like krill meal where I live and I have to buy it in liquid form from AN, and other thingies so the more alternatives I see here the better.
Do you think that adding lactobacillus with milk is safe? Ive done it in the past with watered down milk. at first I did it once to treat plants that had a fungal infection and it worked like a charm and then since I didnt see anything bad happening every grow at least once or twice I add milk for the lactobacillus, the rest I add in liquid or powder form from commercial brands. I know that lactobacillus is not instantly available in milk but it will show when it starts breaking down in the soil.

 

[Raf]

I myself provide all nutes in the same way... I use cocoa hulls as mulch, those teas, a little alfalfa in veg, not much else. Soil is from my compost plus perlite. Its hard for me to trust companies... i feel they either sell u S**** or they charge u too much (maybe reasonably high idk their numbers lol). Also i don't know how long they have been in the store. Here there are many "organic nutes" that seem mostly molasses and fulvic acid, and the wolrdwide mining byproducts that come in salt form.

My light is what i call a Cheapo quantum, cost about 20 US for 100W. Aluminium roasting pan, phillips 2700-3000K high effiency modules extracted from led bulbs, heatsink paste and a cooler... (i would use bridgelux strips if they were avabile here).

I read somewhere people swearing milk was awesome in flower and some said it was risky but maybe they just were "buy ur nutes stop wasting my time" peeps. Maybe u could use yogurt, as i believe has more nutes avaiable and also more lactobacilli.

The "bad" things i can think of milk is: buy skimmed one, i dont think we want the fats. Spoiled milk is nasty stuff, potentially full of pathogens. When we want the lactobacilli for our sourdough, we get them from yogurt, and then we addapt them to the bread media, so the nasty stuff don't reproduce much.

Say u put 2 spoons of yogurt and some raisins 1st day, 2 of flour, 2 of water. Second day, add the same (but raisins). Then u start taking half and adding the same weight ended with, half water, half flour. Take raisins out, and about a week from starting you are good to make bread. Mould shouldn't be spotable in the top layer, it is a sign you should be feeding your starter mor often. Usually i feed it every 6-8 hours prior to make bread, but you could go to arround 12 hours. U can store it in the fridge for a week or two before refeeding. Give it a couple of feeds prior to use as it comes a little sleepy from the fridge.

We skip the aeration part, as each time u add water u add oxygen, eitherway, lactobacilli can ferment anaerobically.

It would be interesting to do something like this, but using sterile soil instead of flour, so the lactos get used to their new media.

There is another way to get the lactos, its less safe, but should be ok for this purpose. Let milk spoil in a loosely sealed jar. After say a week, you will see some yellow serum separated from some whiteish gunk (it should smell cheesy and no nasty). Take this with a syringe, repeat the process of the water and flour so only the lactis survive (sort of). This way your starter will be more eterogeneous in regard of lactobacilli sp. Don't tell my costumers but i followed this too, no one got intoxicated after years lol.

I believe once you are satisfied u could store them long term with molasses and some water in the fridge : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223217/ .

I was adding LAB (lactic acid bacteria) just because i had it arround but apparently, its good stuff (and a +1 for yogurt):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0038071716304151

PD: about tryptophan: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1002016018600025

Best regards and nice highs!

 

[Eledin]

I make sure to buy from the most popular of the cheapest grows available. Since theyre constantly selling I can make sure that the ferts are not gonna come fermented or anything. I also dig very deep in the components of said nutrients because in Spain and in the EU in general youre forced to give the ingredients. Ive seen that AN in their official page doesnt list half of the ingredients and I know its because they dont want people copying their recipes but thankfully I have acces to all that good info so I make sure to add everything I cant with ammendments and top dressing. For example I know that Big Bud (which I use, its for the first 3 weeks of flower) has milk serum proteins, ascorbic acid, citric acid and L aminoacids (including L-tryptophan) but in AN official page they only list the potassium and phosphorus. So, for me is much easier to know what Im really puting in my soil with all these bottled nutes. As for microorganisms, I try to avoid buying them in liquid form but I wanted to try tarantula by AN alongside great white because it has bacillus thuringiensis canadiensis and its suposed to kill gnat (and other's insects) larvae (just like nematodes but they dont need pray to survive, they are happy with the suggars and goodies from organic nutes, they secrete an acid that kills the larvae instead of feeding on them, which makes them way more long lived in the soil). So far works pretty well, I used to have to top dress with DE every grow but the PH of diatomaceous earth is alkaline, great source of silica too but you cant use too much.
I will definetely look more into the yougurt thing, make sure I buy from a brand that doesnt put nasty chemicals in it or maybe even make my own, I need to stop using milk hahaha or at least the whole product.
I dont have my own compost right now, I live in an apparment, I used to have a big backyard and I had fun making it from food scraps (except animal products), plant waste, egg shells, etc... but now I just buy kelp meal, alfalfa meal, phosphoric rock dust, bat guano (Im careful with this combo because of the phosphorus), worm castings, biochar, dolomite lime and azomite. I try to give it variety without fertilizing too hard because as I said I need to add some other stuff that I cant find other than in liquid organic nutes and I plant from seed, I like when they get big because they dont have their roots restricted from the previos pot.

 

[Raf]

awesome info about those nutes! and nice mix!

I believe i romanticize the fact that i go real cheap. That meant going with local nutes suppliers which i dont trust too much. Nowdays here in Argentina we had a massive ammount of dolar inflation so the prices of international nutes are more competitive, i ll look on those things you mentioned.

If i remember correctly, rice hulls provide silica. Also, silica is really abbundant on earth so maybe i wouldn't go too crazy about it, odds are there are loads already IF IN SOIL. Cocoa Hulls ph is 5.8, and 2.5-1-3.

Here BTI by itself is pretty cheap, didnt knew it kept in the soil, good to know!

As grandma used to say:

Salud, pesetas y fuerza en la bragueta!

 

[Eledin]

awesome info about those nutes! and nice mix!

I believe i romanticize the fact that i go real cheap. That meant going with local nutes suppliers which i dont trust too much. Nowdays here in Argentina we had a massive ammount of dolar inflation so the prices of international nutes are more competitive, i ll look on those things you mentioned.

If i remember correctly, rice hulls provide silica. Also, silica is really abbundant on earth so maybe i wouldn't go too crazy about it, odds are there are loads already IF IN SOIL. Cocoa Hulls ph is 5.8, and 2.5-1-3.

Here BTI by itself is pretty cheap, didnt knew it kept in the soil, good to know!

As grandma used to say:

Salud, pesetas y fuerza en la bragueta!

Yes, silica is already present in most commercial substrates (unless youre going coco) but I always add more, I like to push silica and calcium to the max without saturating the soil (calcium needs magnessium to be absorved, I mix my egg shell + vinegar calcium with epsom salts which have magnessium and sulfur, or just a calmag if its veg and I dont mind the extra N). I notice that adding more the main and secondary stems grow thicker. It makes them hungrier but also more productive. I have a tutorial here about egg shells and vinegar for fast absorption calcium where I also explain why is not harmful to the plants at all:

Fast absorption calcium from egg shells.

Like with the lentil fertilizer, I was doing a batch of calcium for foliar or soil feeding and I decided to post the process here because it might be helpful for some people, wether because they have a sudden calcium deficiency, they want to give only calcium without magnessium or its a big...

www.thcfarmer.com

I like to have the slow release from by light supersoil and then play with high release organic nutes to reach the max of their capabilities (I end up burning a tip or two until I know what theyre capable of but thats no biggie, or perhaps a leaf with a bit of N toxicity cause I pushed too much in veg, but as long as you catch the early signs and go to the previous dosage it should be fine).

"Here BTI by itself is pretty cheap, didnt knew it kept in the soil, good to know!"
Yes, unlike nematodes, they dont eat the larvae, when the larvae tries to munch on the roots it kills them. It feeds like every other Bacillus. I do 2-3 applications of all microorganisms during the grow, 1 or 2 is probably enough if youre feeding slow quantities of suggars through all the grow, I just wanna make sure I have a healthy population of them. I use several more besides the ones from the Bacillus family.

"As grandma used to say:
Salud, pesetas y fuerza en la bragueta!"

Hahaha your grandma is/was a funny woman, none of mine would have ever said anything close to that.
I used to play an old mmorpg called Argentum when I was a kid, you probably know about it. I played with a lot of argentinian people there because the game is from there, I always was "el gallego pete". Some said it with love, some not so much hahaha. I also love the argentinian accent. One of my best friends is from Argentina but he lives in Madrid.

 

[Raf]

Awesome mate! I'll add some calcium then!

LMFAO, i say pt when someone is annoying in AOE, never fails xD.

I have spanish passport, still have to visit my ancestors land tho, according to ancestry, i'm a real raw gallego from northern spain xD.

Good thing the argentinian has some good company! most of my family emigrated, yet many feel a little lonely. Friendship rituals are pretty essential to argentinian people.

Best regards!

 

[Eledin]

Awesome mate! I'll add some calcium then!

LMFAO, i say pt when someone is annoying in AOE, never fails xD.

I have spanish passport, still have to visit my ancestors land tho, according to ancestry, i'm a real raw gallego from northern spain xD.

Good thing the argentinian has some good company! most of my family emigrated, yet many feel a little lonely. Friendship rituals are pretty essential to argentinian people.

Best regards!

Nice! You most definetely have to visit Galicia if thats your heritage. Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Sevilla, are all worth visiting too!
Yes, argentinians are very social people. They also tend to mind their bussiness in a good way unless theyre your friends, in which case they will be very straight forward on what they think hahaha (which is also good, or at least preferable to lying/not telling you)