More Cool Things

HIDEY-HO BOYS AND GIRLS, in the SKUNK land of cannabis. I’m The Rev, and I’m here today to babble about several (cool) cannabis growing/smoking/etc. “things” … Most of them are inexpensive, or even free, but sometimes they may be a bit more spendy, like the Reverse Osmosis unit in this article, which is right around $200.00 (USD) and completely worth it in my opinion, and in my case especially, using city water that is chlorinated (chloramine) and not “hard” water, and being an all-natural indoor grower using living soil. Also, two very cool things that go together I can tell you first hand, are Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and some Riffraff Thai—yeah buddy—like in the photo. So, let’s spark ‘em if you got ‘em and look at some cool things with Rev, eh?

 

Earth Juice pH Down Crystals

Earth Juice All-Natural pH Down Crystals

Alright, now this is one of my most recent discoveries and it has to do with aero-cloners success rates and root-mass. This product (by Earth Juice) is all natural, consisting of citric acid (as is found in fruits) so no synthetic worries here. I would never recommend using this product for adjusting teas or water to anywhere below 7.0 – 7.2 using a living soil mix, due to the chaos it will bring to all the microlife in your soil. You have to think small, very-very small when leveraging the powerful “Voodoo” of living soil to your advantage. Also, to be considered is that citric acid is a chelating element, so personally, I wouldn’t use it unless I had to; in a soil situation with teas or water, for pH adjusting. To be honest, I let my soil life adjust/adapt to the soil and water pH, which it does within a couple of weeks, then, they just keep getting better and better at it; evolution at work my friends. You just gotta let it happen. You dig?

My personal growing style is indoors using living soil and just water basically. A top down method in part, with some custom additions like spikes and layers to allow me to flower larger plants in smaller containers and still just add water. You can get my latest book: True Living Organics 2^nd Edition here – http://a.co/iYHWOvL

Standard Clone King 32 Site Aero Cloner

Let’s get to the “meat” of this particular cool thing, and that is when using aero-cloners; like in the photo. Unlike my soil, I like my aero cloning environment to be fairly “life free” while roots are forming. My favorite water to use is chlorinated tap water and reverse osmosis filtered water (rain or distilled would also work here) to bring my water PPM to around 60. My cloners hold 3 gallons of water. To these 3 gallons of 60 PPM chlorinated water I add about ½ tablespoon of CaMg+ (a calcium magnesium liquid amendment from General Organics) and while the cloner is running, I pop out one of the collars that hold the cuttings in place, and I dump 1/8^th teaspoon (heaping) right into the cloner water; this is so it assimilates slower and more gradually. I repeat this process once every 8-10 days, also bumping up the water and CaMg+ along the way as well. I use my cloners perpetually, so cuttings are always coming in and going out.

Here’s the link on Amazon to get these citric acid crystals: http://a.co/awnuT9S

 

Ground Pumpkin Seeds

Ground and whole kernel pumpkin seeds

Okay my all-natural growing army out there, here’s a real fantastic amendment that is super easy to source locally, and cheap, for many of you around the world. Pumpkin seeds (along with most squash seeds) which run about 0.1 – 0.5 – 0.5, as far as NPK (Nitrogen Phosphorous and Potassium, respectively) ratios. I grind them up in your standard coffee bean grinder, I grind them very fine, and I’ll tell you why in a bit. Let me show you in a cup of seeds (so about ¼ cup of ground) what they contain for your plants and soil life:

 

Pumpkin Seeds Raw per ¼ Cup Finely Ground:

• Calcium – 59.3 mg
• Iron – 21.0 mg
• Magnesium – 738.0 mg
• Phosphorous – 1620.0 mg
• Potassium – 1114.0 mg
• Zinc – 10.3 mg
• Copper – 1.9 mg
• Manganese – 4.2 mg

 

Of course, these levels are variable to some degree always from crop to crop of pumpkins, but always close. As you can see there are some very important micronutrients and secondary nutrients in decent amounts, along with a great array of vitamins like vitamin C, K, Niacin, Folate, Choline, Thiamin, Riboflavin, and B6; for the microlife in the soil, I bet these are important for them too. Here’s how I use this incredible amendment:

Highly exotic 18-week Purple Thai

I use the finely ground version throughout the life of the plants, about every third watering I blend in about ½ teaspoon with the water (per gallon) for the plants, just before I water them. This finely ground “nut meat” stays suspended very well in water, just make sure it stays stirred up here and there to keep distribution levels even from plant to plant. This is basically like a primo micro-nutrient amendment with tons of great things for cannabis plants, especially flowering cannabis plants. Just remember the rules, don’t over-use this, like anything else, to much is a bad thing. This is an outstanding amendment for those of you who endeavor to grow highly exotic long flowering varieties like the Purple Thai in the photo; you can’t find cannabis like this in local shops.

Pumpkin seeds, are also super good for us peeps. I have started eating them for about the last year, on salads, in pasta dishes, and rice dishes, even on my ice cream Sundays. This is some super-food amigos, make no mistake.

 

Personal Blender

Your basic twenty-dollar personal smoothie blender

Man, these little personal blenders are great if you are an all-natural grower, using organic methods. If you like to make teas this is a fantastic tool, and you can add in kelp you harvested from the sea yourself, some algae maybe, a little alfalfa, some Blood Worms maybe, and boom … in a heartbeat you can have all those things processed down into smaller particles for rapid assimilation in your teas. Those above examples of tea additions are a few of the things I use, along with bee pollen, in my teas. Always add a bit of dolomite lime to your teas which adds both Ca and Mg, along with buffering the pH to about 7.0 which is (very) important when using a living soil. These are easy to find in any store like Wally-World (Walmart), or online. I use the Hamilton Beach brand, and have had it for like 6 years, I use it often and it still works awesome.

 

Countertop Reverse Osmosis Water Filtering Unit

Reverse osmosis water filter unit countertop version

Greatest addition for an organic city grower, hands down. These little units have 3 stages, 2 of the stages are activated carbon filters and the other is the reverse osmosis membrane itself. These filtering units will bring your water PPM down below 5.0 and remove all the chlorine, fluoride etc., as well. The tap water goes in, passes through the first carbon filter, then into the R/O membrane. From there the water output splits, the “waste water” goes out through one tube, while the rest of the (membrane filtered) water goes through the final (2^nd) carbon filter, before leaving the unit out of another tube.

The R/O unit’s “wastewater” is fine to use for all kinds of things, like watering outdoor plants and trees, or house plants, as a couple of examples. Don’t worry it’s not poisoned or anything.

I like to add back some of the “waste water” to the filtered water to bring my PPM up to about 40 PPM as I find this works very well with living soil that is potent, like mine. Since the wastewater has passed through the first carbon filter, all the chlorine (95%) has been removed so no worries there—as long as your first carbon filter is working properly and not too old. Cheers everyone, I hope you enjoyed this edition of ‘Cool Things’ and make sure to keep coming back to SKUNK to see more articles from me added all the time, L8r G8rs.

 

Link to my countertop R/O water filtering unit (style A): https://www.purewaterproducts.com/countertop-ro

Link to my input carbon filter cartridge: https://www.purewaterproducts.com/products/fc003

Link to my output carbon filter cartridge: https://www.purewaterproducts.com/products/fc001