Brix Levels; it's relevance to cannabis carbohydrate loading and enzymatic breakdown.

@ Seamaiden....and anyone else that wants to listen.
First, not only am I pissed that you're married, but I'm pissed that you had access to fresh kick-ass hefeweizen.
OK on more serious notes
- The seagrass tank is comin' slow because its takin' me a while to piece together directions from an old school aquarium fiend, aquarium science, and just getting a frickin' stubborn grass to grow. so far I've managed to keep most of it alive. The hermit crabs are supposed to be there for "clean-up" sort of like a plecostomus in fresh water, and they are hard to kill. I'd probably shit myself daily if I can get it to the point where I have seahorse and pipefish.

Back on topic: I see that the focus has somewhat switched to "overclocking" the plants (ah crap computer analogy for plants), and additives for making the plants/soil microbes healthy. Perhaps the microbes are making all the "meth" we need for this runner, or maybe not enough research has been done on this subject...I vote both as of right now.

Regarding the mycorrhizae I do remember now that many evergreen trees like pine form pretty tight relationships with mycorrhizae. So, both cannabis and evergreens being acid-o-philes could point towards a possible relationship between mycorrhizae and canna-roots. The mycorrhizae would obviously greatly expand the "reach" of the roots, but I don't think the root structure would be expanded itself (but effectively it is because of the mycorr's reach).

Another question, although related, would be whether N-fixing bacteria can be found within soil cultures inoculated with N-Fixing bacteria (aka HIPPIE JUICE ftw). Its hard to isolate a lot of agrobacteria. We may have to go with qualitative and quantitative outcomes to make a good guess on if Hippie Juice works.

So thats a lot of words for not so many answers...I'm sorry for that. On the bright side, I'm seeing in the Dr. Earth roll-call a lot of microbes that do a lot of different things as far as metabolism needs and products. A wide variesty of plant needs may be satisfied by all the species listed, and others that may not be so well known (I always assume humans can know much more than we do.) I will look up those species of bacteria when I have time (chemist job over soon...must...get into...grad school), and then offer up some ideas even if microbio is not one of my strong suits.

As far as my own roots from the last indoor crop...I used molasses for the entire flowering period in conjunction with nutes (my hippie juice is no where near as good as yours). That was ~10 weeks worth of use, and I can say with confidence that the size of rootballs, length of the roots, and amount of root hairs increased over the last crop that used molasses for maybe 5 weeks. I did not see any obvious mycorrhizae, but without using some kind of inoculation or soil from outside I didn't really expect to see it. I also had to water less..maybe because the root system was bigger.

I think that with the molasses you were, in essence, culturing microbes. The hippie juice is officially called Super Plant Tonic, by Blue Mountain Organics (they sell via eBay, pretty good peeps).

Shoot me a pm, I may know some people who might be able to help you with the seagrass. It's not at all commonly seen in hobbyist tanks, but sometimes in public aquaria and some of my friends do work for public aquariums still (one of them breeds cephalopods, specializing in some pretty neat cuttlefishes).

So, as far as the mycos, as I understand it, remembering that they not only promote hair root growth (which I don't think is going to really increase what we perceive as the rootball), but also, again in essence, chelate the nutrients, I'm not so sure that they're to be found only in acid-loving environs. Especially when I see them marketed for agricultural applications, ya know? Makes me think that they have a wider appeal, so to speak.

Stuff like Happy Frog and Dr. Earth also have them, as well as... Piranha I think some folks use (?) all will inoculate, and my own question is, and probably can't be answered unless I had the equipment, what says you have to continue re-inoculation? If the molasses feeds them, then as long as you're ensuring a 'rounded' diet, wouldn't they continue on?

Nice bump, by the way.

Id like to get a really good microscope and brew some different batches of myo/ben fugi/and enzymes with carbs and see how they react before the plant feeds. I would also like to try some different water temperature and batch time to see the effect--I will have to start watching ebay to see if I can get a really good deal on one. I would think that one or two inoculations would be enough to start the soil ecology in the right direction-none of those products are cheap and most recommend doses throughout the plant cycle.

Exactly! It's the repeated dosing that I don't quite get. If they're a natural part of the ecosystem, then why wouldn't the initial inoculation (maybe over the course of a year?) event suffice?

In my searches I had found an outfit that would send a free sample of mycos for shipping, a few grams as I recollect. I didn't bookmark 'em, though.

I think you'd need something to aid the visual IDs, too, Dr. Von, some sort of reference book.

Pretty lofty aspirations.. If I were you I'd just go to various forest areas and grab soil samples frim within rootballs.. That will be teeming with mycorhizzae..

born2killspam said:

Pretty lofty aspirations.. If I were you I'd just go to various forest areas and grab soil samples frim within rootballs.. That will be teeming with mycorhizzae..

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Not really just time consuming. I fig would have to test and log about 200 samples. I'm not in a rush here so when I can get A deal on a micro I will set up a small lab project and go to it. I will stick with the growing medium I use and do before and after test with more than one growing plant. As far as id compairisons---the largest library in the world is only a click away.

this is one of the few REAL threads on RIU.....thank you!

I miss this thread.. Thanks for the nostalgia..

my understanding :
dont put molasses in hydro, put molasses in soil grows.
the molasses doesnt feed the plant, it feeds the soil.
when the soil gets fed all the little organic beasties thrive, and the plant gets fed from there.
i thought molasses just clogs up hydro systems ?

It can, but doesn't necessarily.. I suppose it depends on the equipment.. When I was doing hydro I added a bacterial complex designed to break down fish waste, and actually had goldfish in the resevoir.. I don't know if molasses helped those particular organisms or not, but twas a successful crop..
With sterile hydro though its pretty pointless as far as I've read.. No beasties, no benefit..

According to friends at Humboldt nutrients, the main need for the carbs (molases) are for food for the mycorrhizal/ bacterium to ferment. If growing in Coco the environment is much more conducive to perpetuation of these beneficials.

In Hydro I use a container with lid, with several 1/8th inch holes in the top and bottom. I fill the container with Hydroton pellets and put all the carbs and benies in there and it becomes a perpetual innoculant...just add molases. Everytime I change the reserviour I just put more molases in the container and replace it into the clean nutes thus perpetually fermenting the innoculants.

We need more quality threads like this.

Bump, hopefully we can reignite this discussion.

normlpothead said:

I don't know...

Yeast eats sugar, and has byproducts... But I doubt it would create enough alcohol to matter.

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the yeast will be in aerobic conditions so it wont make alcohol at all.

normlpothead said:

Great thread...


It's my understanding that complex carbohydrates feed the microorganisms in the soil rather than feeding the plant. The sugars are food for them, and are too big to be absorbed by the plant.

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Ya, the sugar is too large for the membrane but the plant can excrete sugars and does regularly. That is typically how soil flora get their reducing sugars from the outside world. In return, they provide some of the work of manufacturing the building blocks like amino acids, chelated metals and other goodies.

But sugars are also a chemical and a-biological reactions are also preformed such as reducing oxidized metals and being a catalyst for unique reactions that is a 'live soil'.

One more item. While brix and sugars are great tasting when in liquid form for drinking such as wine or corn on the cob, Im not sure we ought to assume that the best tasting bud for smoking comes from its brix or sugar content. I could imagine sulfur, nitrogen and funky aromatic rings are what is giving the rich, different tastes of the different strains, not simple sugars or what the brix is looking to measure.

But like everyone here, Im still trying to figure it out so if anyone has any references on the topic or comments, lets have em.

born2killspam said:

I'd analogize the microbes more to the machine that mashes the peas and carrots and prunes so that old ppl don't have to chew..

Ok fine, I don't know if such a machine exists for geriatric food processing, but it should, and if it did exist then thats what I'd analogize the soil microbes to..

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This is a very good analogy of soil flora, thanks for it as Im gonna steal it. But I would add that they are also the chef as they harvest in-organics in the soil such as chelating and mining for phosphorus and calcium.

This might be the best thread (most technical, informative, interesting) on rollitup. I don't usually post, but feel compelled to thank LP, kill spam, and everyone else who posted.