lex0415 said:

That is what I meant too, but I did not know you could kill the natural beneficial microbes in coco coir if you cooked/processed coco like soil.

What I got out of it was to mix all your amendments with EWC and let that 'cook', then when its time to plant, mix in the appropriate amount of coco, transplant clones or plant seedlings, then water.

Thanks for the info on the chow mix thread, I'll search for it.

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Seamaiden said:

That's just it, unless by 'cooking' you mean putting it through heat, like in an oven, you're culturing microbes. That, by default, means you're not killing 'beneficials,' you're growing more. I think it may be more difficult in coir because it is not mineralized as soil is. The microbes are the providers of the plant foods, and vice versa, and so require a complete buffet of nutrients with which to work, and hopefully a well-balanced buffet.

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caveman4.20 said:

That's why soil growing is more faith based then science because it is indeed a very complex biology... Just wait till you get to cationic exchange or ionic whatever I'm not there yet but I been paying more attention to plant response because it is very difficult to replicate exact organic medium conditions that's why we or I take a shotgun approach and use so many different things and hope some or all of it works ... A few things give me peace of mind but nothing is absolute or concrete other then how the plant responds to the environment it's expected to live on.

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lex0415 said:

Yeah, caveman said it could have something to do with being too hot. I guess there is no true way to check the amount of microbial activity like you can check pH and EC using meters, but the growth rate, amount and quality of flowers produced would give me an idea of how healthy my rhizosphere is.

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Seamaiden said:

I don't see why you can't make a slurry and scope the soil. I'll have to ask some other organic peeps I know if they've ever done that. Outside of that, there are some soil-testing facilities that also test for microbial life, but i haven't gotten a handle on that yet.

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caveman4.20 said:

For the coco I imagine two samples before and after cooking the after should be bigger sample to make up for amendments taking up space and not replacing the bacteria they may only be native to where coco was harvested from.... Just thinking out loud.

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lex0415 said:

Definitely before and after, also, I would like samples of the amendments after they cooked seperate from the coco to see the different microbes. Also, multiple samples during different phases of growth to see how they multiply and/or die-off.

Alright, now I'm getting carried away with all these samples I want done and I don't even know where to get soil samples done lol

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Seamaiden said:

They may want to know what you're growing. I give vague answers, because my crops change. I am a market gardener, if I understand how my level is defined, etc. (Just had to participate in the USDA Agricultural Census, I'm sure people like chickenman know what that means.) If cultivation is the issue, then peppers and solaneceous veggies would be my own response, but then I would launch into a little schpiel about my failure with cole crops and successes with carrots and some root veggies, and would ask that the test allow me the flexibility to figure out what crops I'll be growing, since I experiment with so many.

Gotta learn the gift of babble.

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caveman4.20 said:

Hops is a cousin of pot close cousins.

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