🐛Thai Cannabis, IPMO, and Soil Microbiology, with Potent Ponics

1:00PM Jan 28, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Keywords:

Thai genetics

indigenous microorganisms

cannabis legislation

tourist medical cards

terpene profiles

temple tie

land race strains

freak show crosses

IPMO

integrated pest management

microbial applications

trichoderma balance

super labs

plant ferment extracts

cannabis education

Greetings cultivators worldwide. Jordan River here back with more grow cast straight out of the super lab today. Good friend of the show, potent ponics is back. That's right. He's back from Thailand. He's on the line with us, little bit of a choppy connection. Please forgive us, but Steve is doing traveling, and he's got a lot of great stuff to update us on, including incoming Thai genetics for the community. Oh, it's wonderful, as well as his work in Thailand, dealing with different indigenous microorganisms coming back to the states and more. It's an amazing episode. I know you're gonna love it before we jump into it with Steve, though, shout out to mighty hydro. That's right, our choice partner in the San Diego, California area, we love mighty hydro. Get what you need. If you're a grower from mighty hydro, they've got an amazing selection, a knowledgeable staff, and they support community. We're always doing classes down there at mighty hydro San Diego. We really appreciate that team. And listen a lot of these stores. They just don't care about the community. They don't care about this stuff. And when we call them up to do classes, can't even get someone to answer. I've been hung up on. But not at mighty hydro, they support education for local home growers. It's tough out there in California right now, so you've got to support the real ones. And we want to give a big thank you to mighty hydro for always hosting us. Recently did Pesta Palooza down there. It was credible and huge, thank you to our partners in San Diego. If you're in the SoCal area, hit up mighty hydro for all your growing needs. We support them. They support the community, and we want to make sure that we vote with our dollar. Thank you to mighty hydro and stay tuned to everybody for next year's Tour of classes. Okay, let's get into it with Steve raisner, thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello, podcast listeners, you are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today. Before we get started, as always, I urge you to share this show. Turn someone on to growing turn someone on growcast. It's the best way that you can help us out. And of course, see everything we're doing@growcastpodcast.com you can join up our membership. We'd love to see you in there, our seeds, our classes, it's all there, everybody. Thank you for your support. Today, we have a good friend of mine back on the show. Been a minute since he's been on the main podcast. Here, he's made a few growcast TV appearances for the members, but back stateside from his work overseas, we have potent ponics himself. Steve raisner is on the line. What's up? Steve, how you doing? Man, I'm doing well. How you doing? Good? Good man. Thank you for coming back on the show. You've been an International Man of Mystery for some time now, but you're back stateside. So can you update the Grow cast audience? Just a brief overview of what you've been up to in your Thailand travels, and what brings you

back here? Sure, yeah, finished up my first six month contract out there in Thailand, and then spent a couple months working for a couple of other cool people out there. And then around the time of the elections there, my dad had to have some surgery, so it made sense to come back and kind of wait to see how the new landscape was looking after the election. And so far, it's not looking super great. It looks like the new new government's not very cannabis friendly and wanting to kind of crack down on a lot. I know a couple of people that have been raided and other things like that in the last, let's say, a month and a half. So it's not been, not been like it was when I was there. It's certainly a different climate now, for sure. And man, you're kind of seeing a lot of the more corporate powers to be. You know that we're very upset about how things kind of became legalized suddenly, kind of clawing back some of their control of the market.

Man, I was so excited to see that part of the world have legislative change like that. It was totally out of left field. You know, Southeast Asia traditionally so strict when it comes to psychoactives and drug use. But here you go. A few years later, it seems like there's already trouble. That's a shame. I hope that the industry continues, and I hope that they're able to regain some of that. How did it feel to be over there during that time? Man? Like, let's just say that it does get worse and worse and kind of go back to normal. You were there, like ground floor during this insane moment in cannabis history. Did you feel that gravity over there? Yeah.

I mean, it's certainly, like a flash in the pan moment, kind of like, I don't know if you remember the summer of legalization in 2004 Canada had a similar thing where they had temporarily legalized weed for about a year, um, before, kind of cracking down again. This kind of reminds me of that in a lot of ways, where not that it's like illegal. You can still buy weed everywhere in Thailand, but they're cracking down on the businesses, and they want to squeeze it down to a lot fewer players than there are in the market right now. And they're not really, you know, they want to move everything back to medical only and everything else, and make everything you'll have a card system and all this other stuff that, like, just makes no sense at this point. You've already had it legalized. Like, just let it go. It's not called. Problems. You know, you want to do something that's going to help Thailand do something about the alcohol problem. You know that there's a huge, huge problem with Lao cow and stuff like that, that would do far more good as far as saving lives in Thailand than worrying about cannabis. So

true, but, but you're saying from a kind of smokers perspective, or a tourist perspective, it's still prevalent over there right now.

Oh yeah, if you're a tourist and you just want to go smoke weed on the beach and Phuket, you can totally still do that. It's just a matter of it's more on the commercial back end than it is on the front end. But I do really think in the next in the near future, they might require some kind of medical card, but because the industry is basically being completely supported by tourism right now. I kind of don't see them not making a, you know, tourist medical cards type situation for right for those that may need one, one

thing that I was very interested in over there, you gave us some updates on on the membership show, but the strains that you got to witness, you know, traveling that very rich and storied countryside from a cannabis perspective and getting to see these different strains in different regions. You were telling me about how they got their names, and you were even able to collect some of the genetics. Can you talk about the Thai strains that you witnessed, anything that really stood out to you and how they got their unique names.

Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff there. So, like, I think one of the neat traits about it was that it seemed like the same environments had a lot of the same terpene profiles, right? So, like, a lot of the people that were growing in the rice fields had a lot more lemonade dominant cultivars, wow. Whereas the stuff that was being grown more in, like the mountains and things like that, was much more dominated by, say, Mango Terps and stuff like that, especially up north, also up north, you also had things like more of the terpenes for sandalwood. Like up in Chiang Rai, a lot more the sandalwood Terps. There was even one in Chiang Mai. They even tasted kind of like clove cigarette, almost like Jar rooms, which was really interesting. I had never tasted that before in cannabis. So that was a very unique kind of profile. But one of, I think the most interesting one we found was the temple tie, which came from these giant, 20 foot tall plants. I mean the short one was like 18 feet tall, and these are all been growing under like 1212, conditions, right? So that genetics is very vigorous, and we had a chance to start working with that and crossing that into stuff and and we'll even have some of that available here before too long for the listeners, yeah,

man, we got to talk about that for sure. Members, of course, getting first dibs on this tie drop, but there is a project coming, potent ponics, rhizo Rich grow cast seed, CO can of Thai seeds collab. Okay, we're calling it the Thai connection. We're bringing you guys those Thai seeds. Again, if you were watching TV, you've heard about this, but, uh, I'm so excited for this. Steve, thank you for for doing this for us. It works really well because we don't traditionally work with land race strains and long flowering sativas and things like ties in our traditional breeding work. So there's a lot of members of our community who are very excited about this, because this is the type of stuff that they want to grow or just grab a pack and hold on to. So we got to talk about how these specific strains expressed the Buddha tie massive. Now this is one that you guys selected a mail from, and these crosses have have this mail added in there. What can you tell me about the Buddha, Thai, massive. Yeah. So the

mail that is on these particular ones is one that was first off, what like second most vigorous one, the first most vigorous one just kind of had shitty node spacing, so it wasn't did make sense, but this one had really good notes facing compared to the other males. Also has like a little streaks of purple on it, which is really pretty, and had a really strong peach terpene profile. Oh, go figure, yeah, even the pollen kind of smells a little peachy when you get it in the vial. So pretty wild, but a really, really cool cultivar. And again, you're, you know, some of the you can go back and look at some of the DAT smoke show episodes and stuff like that that we have, which is just a kind of a screw around show that we have on Wednesdays. And you can see, can a tie from when he first planted it in the yard, and then, like, six weeks later, the thing's taller than he is. And, you know, after eight weeks, it's, you know, seven, eight weeks, it's, you know, pushing 1012, feet tall. So again, the vigor you get with this cultivars is beyond anything I've seen anywhere else in the planet. And super stoked. I know we have the temple tie sour cream OG, which is like a super, super sour cultivar that he's been working a long time. That's the only western cross. And then all the other ones are with different Thai cultivars. So we have the high low, the high low ties, so that the high low is from Northeastern, kind of north of Buriram, and that's more of like a has a little bit more of like a spiciness to. It, and it's like a little bit of like Vietnamese influence. And then you have the Sweet TAi OG with the temple tie. Now, the Sweet TAi OG on that one is one of the most coffee smelling ones of all the cultivars that we popped that one and one other one with the two coffees that we found out of all the cultivars. So that'll give you, like a coffee tie with the temple tie. And then the other one we have is the freaky fuel. The freaky fuel is a freak show across the jet fuel. So with that one, you're going to get some of those serrated edge leaves you might in the, you know, low percentage chance to find a freak show, you probably have to get it to like an f2 or three before you come

out. Oh my gosh, so cool. Yeah.

But you'll definitely get some like, like lace, Lacey leaf ones that are kind of like a, not a totally freak show, but kind of have, like that saw blade teeth edge to it. That's like maybe a little bit longer, almost like an afghan, blanket kind of thing. I'm

so excited about this. So not only are we getting some land raised strains, some longer flowering strains, really, from a direct source. Man, it was cool that you were able to see these in action and then bring these seeds to our community and to our audience. That's amazing. But then also you have some freak show crossed in there. So Steve, I just want to thank you for doing the really. This is the first ever official grow cast seed co collab. This is going to be a limited drop that we do together. You're really doing our community of service with this. So I'm really excited about it. Man, like I said, not only the land race stuff, but some freak show crosses, which is traditionally stuff that just rich, doesn't work, right? So this is going to be a good little mini drop. I'm so fucking excited. Man, we're gonna have to all smoke one once we get through this drop. And we'll we'll smoke some Thai together, and we'll smoke some a richest peach quake. We'll burn one down.

Yeah, be nice to see the temple tie cross with their peach quake. And, yeah, see how that comes out. Okay,

so, so one of the other things that I noticed when you look at the strains and you look at their lineage. Some of them have really cool names. And you talked about how Thai regions name their strains a little differently. Can you talk about that on this on this episode, yeah.

So you have, like, squirrel tail, oh, so yeah, which is kind of like a generic name. You also have, like, hungaloc hungalak is just like the local weed, or, I guess, would be like a translation of like village weed along those lines, yeah, but they do have a couple different ones that are maybe a little more more sought after. But really, we talked about 130 cultivars that were Thai, and I think six of them had potential, and two of them were actually worth really working hard. And what was also interesting was there's a lot of stuff that smelled amazing and veg, and then when it went to flower, and once you feed it a little heavier, just goes away. And it had kind of more washed out, for lack of a better term smell, especially, I mean, we had, we had seven different cultivars that really smelled like chocolate. Like three of them were like, really, just one was like a dark chocolate, one was like a sugary chocolate, and the other one was almost like a strawberry chocolate. And then one of them was like a greasy, like, melted chocolate bar, kind of smell like it was like this weird, like, almost like a cacao, melted cacao kind of thing. It was neat. But none of them in flower smelled like that or tasted like it and then smoke. So it was really frustrating. The other thing too is a lot of the Thai streams would kind of get to this, like, late and slow flower period when they were since Amelia, so like, they like, delay their maturity rate or whatever, if they're not pollinated at all. So it was weird to kind of see that, like, they almost, like, get stuck in flower, like on, like, week four. It's weird. And that's like

a do you think, do you think any of that is due to the selection style that was happening by the people there.

No, I think, I think, I mean, the most makes sense is evolutionarily, like it makes sense for it to try and pause the way to get pollinated. That makes a lot more sense to me. But and stuff just took grabbing. We had some stuff that went on like we were on, like, week 14 or 15, and it wasn't close to finishing it, so we just threw it outside. Motion. Immediately melted. Yeah, it was under 50% shade cloth. So as soon as they went into full sun, they just got, you know, roasted, maybe two out of every 20 would survive being put straight into the sun. And that was another big issue we had to really deal with, was you can't, like root clones for two weeks and throw them in the greenhouse. It doesn't work that way, even with 50% shade cloth. So we'd have to take them for two weeks, root them, and then put them in a small pot, like the size of like a beer can or a Coke can, size little plastic pot, and then put them in there for an extra week or so in order. To get the root mass large enough to where they would survive. Well, they got put into the greenhouse, and if we didn't do that, they would just die. So if you're on directly under the, you know, equator, which Thailand isn't directly under it, but it's not far off, you really have to do those kinds of extra steps. And it does out in a week to your production time. But at the same time, there's no way around it, right? Like, wow,

whatsoever. Man, so many unique things faced out there. I want to get into that. But you mentioned these, like, kind of traditional names, like squirrel tail, and didn't you say there was one that was, like, dragon's tail or Dragon's tooth or whatever? Do you know why they were giving them those names? Was it how they were, they resembled, or the place they came from, or what, no,

I mean squirrel tail is kind of like a very common name for, just like, large stuff that

has decent because it's maybe because it resembles a poofy squirrel tail on it, versus, like,

exactly, but I had like, squirrel tail from, like, very rum squirrel tail, Chiang Rai squirrel tail, like Chang rye, squirt tail, like butcher deep squirrel tail, like everyone else, like,

yeah, yeah. Like, we used to call a good weed grow or hydro, not knowing how it was grown, that's just, you know what I mean? Like, that's what we used to call high quality weed. So it's more of a resemblance thing than a genetic thing. That's so fucking interesting. Man, I just love to hear this type of shit. Now, what other like major challenges did you face out there? I know you were dealing with the heat and probably pests and dealing with your natural environment. I know that you're no stranger to this, but for me, it would be hard, because so much of my grow relies on products that I'm used to, right? I don't know if I can just go out into the fucking Thai jungle, mix my own soil, cook up my own microbes, cook up my own IPM, what were some of the challenges you faced, and how did you utilize the stuff around you?

Yeah, so we, we definitely did a lot of ipmo. Definitely something like IMO and ipmo and lactobacillus. You're pretty much, you're an idiot if you're not using those in any kind of challenging environment.

Talk about ipmo, like, like, say, a listener's never heard of this concept of ipmo. How would you explain

it? Sure. So I guess, just to, just to kind of finish circle on that with the thrips are really the big issue that we had issues with out there. But so for ipmo is called Integrated Pest Management microbes, or Integrated Pest Control microorganisms, whatever you want to call it, our predatory microorganisms. I think I don't know if there is an official, an official word version of that. I know I originally called it integrated business predatory microbes, but Chris,

you got to yield to the man who invented it, just like you and your super labs. Sorry, go ahead.

So basically, you do something similar to IMO, which, I am. Oh, currently natural farming is indigenous microorganisms. So you cook rice until about 80, 85% done, and basically sterilize it, soften it, and then you put that, and bleached white rice works better than the regular white rice because it partially damages the exterior of the rice so the fungi can treat on a little easier, so they can colonize. So what you do is you put it out in your collection basket. Now you can get, like a cheap basket, like $1 store basket, that are untreated and unpainted. That really is the best thing to use. We just did collections of both wooden boxes and with baskets, and the baskets at a much better positive collection rate than the boxes did. Not that the boxes didn't work, but they weren't as efficient. So you put your basket out into the forest for, you know, four or five days, depending on the temperature, and you'll collect the fungi from the local forest. You can even put a couple of Dart you know, if you find some local mycorrhizae around, you can toss it in there, but you're gonna get all the zaprofitic fungi and, you know, a couple of other different types of forest microbes to collect it on that rice, from the spores, and, you know, the close proximity. You can also take leaf litter, put it above, you know, sprinkle it on the screen, on the top of the box, or the basket to help drop those spores onto it. So once that's fully colonized, you're going to take that weigh it, but we'll call it weighs a kilogram when it's fully colonized, just for the sake of argument. So now we're going to weigh a kilogram of sugar, and then we're going to mix those two together, and then we're going to put a real thin layer of sugar on top, in our bucket or container or whatever, just across the top of it, and kind of act as like a cap layer. You don't want to go too heavy, but just enough to kind of feel the top. And then let it sit for about a week. And what'll happen is it'll go from kind of this, like rice and sugar. Are in fungi mix to like the liquid, and then you can take that and basically use that by the tablespoon to brew up, you know, big batches of stuff. So we use about two cups for a large, five gallon bucket, which is on that heavier side, you can get away with using a single cup, if you wanted to to breed that up and just kind of like a paint strainer bag or something like that with a bunch of air stone and away you go. If you're gonna do a 55 gallon drum, you know you might want to go to maybe four or five cups and then give it a slightly longer brew time. But with the IP Mo, what you're going to do is replace a third, about a third of the rice with insect frass or insects, or freeze dried insects. We get the chicken feed insects or crickets or whatever. In Thailand, you can buy crickets or scorpions or centipedes, or, you know, silkworms or whatever else at the market. But in the United States, you can order most of that stuff online. Order those, or even insect frass, you get your little garden center, that's going to be so if I'm going to do that same kilo of rice, instead, I'm going to do about 300 grams of insect breath or insect Part Two, 700 grams of rice. And then same exact process, cook it, put it in the in the forest, do your collection, cut it in 3% with sugar. When you do it properly with the ipmo, with the sugar, or with the brew, the brew will smell like evergreen, or like winter fresh. It has this very distinct like winter fresh smell or winter green smell that, like you just can't mistake that's and then, you know, you did it right. And I'm not saying that, like, I'm sure different other types of funguses and things can smell that way. But, you know, in Africa and in Thailand and in Oklahoma, it all smelled like winter, fresh and winter, I'm assuming it all smells that way, but it could be different. But for the sake of argument, let's just say that that's how you know you did it right

now, can you use any bugs? Is it just dead bugs? Or do you need to use? What is it better to use something like, close to what you're trying

to kill? Yeah, you kind of want to, you know, if I'm going after grasshoppers, you know, get some cricket. Don't use the worm as close as you can, exactly. But we had really good luck with it, you know, it saved my ass in Zimbabwe when we started getting over one with grasshoppers. And that was a great way for us to kind of get over that hump. You know, the same thing too. With in Georgia, we had a lot of Japanese beetles hitting the hemp really hard, and that worked really well. And then in Oklahoma, we've had really good luck with it, with both cucumber beetles attacking cannabis, but also with blister beetles and all of those are all pretty resistant to most of your traditional bio controls, with the exception of bacterial surgent Galleria. So kind of gives you a weapon against stuff that you normally don't have. Same thing with leaf poppers. It works pretty good on them as well. So that kind of gives you a weapon that you can brew on your own property, that, you know, you can, you can spray it in your mouth. You can, you know, drink it. You can, you know, spray your kids with it. It's not going to hurt anything. You know what? I mean, you know, it's not like, it's a there's nothing else you can buy spray and kill all those insects in your garden, right?

All that good stuff, and grasshoppers in particular, and I'm sure some of those other hardier beetles as well that you mentioned, kind of like you said, there's not a lot of good options against them to begin with, right? Like, they're pretty tough, so maybe the ipmo is optimal. Oh,

yeah. In fact, I have a friend of mine that works with Ken and works in Kenya. I taught him all about this, and he's going back in December, and I'm like, yo, like, throw this against the locus swarm. Like, like, I am dying to find, like, literally anybody. Like, I know there's people right now dealing with this in Colorado, out near Ori that I got totally obliterated, that was in the news. If anybody's dealing with this right now, and or knows at a certain time of year, you're gonna have to deal with this, like, contact me, because I'm trying to find someone that can try this against, like, a totally like, insane onslaught of these things, because I think it'll work like we've had really good luck with this in outbreak situations, because it's, it works like they're very a bossiana, right? Like the more of them, once you start the inspection, It races through the population pretty quickly. So I really do want to try this against more of a an outbreak type situation, because we haven't had a chance to other than the, you know, the small situation we dealt with in Zen before COVID. But even that isn't like some of the stuff I've seen in Colorado, devastating

man. And I know how tough those grasshoppers can be my guard. My outdoor garden is small enough, luckily, that I can just kill them by hand or launch them out of the garden or something, you know. But I can't imagine a swarm devastating your cannabis crop. That is insane. You said the thrips in Thailand, were they, like, mega thrips? Yeah. These are far eastern, yeah, these are, like, Eastern Titan thrips.

No, these ones would always appear after the high winds. So I think they're being kicked up by the wind, or they've, like, adapted to air transport for. I can tell, because that seems to be the how we were getting them, as far as I can tell, into the greenhouse to begin with. But we had to, like, if we weren't constantly spraying a good rotation with them, like, forget it. Like the five and one seemed to be the thing that worked the best against them. I PMO definitely knocked the numbers back, but we weren't able to. At no point were we able ever to get them to zero, like they were just everywhere, constantly around, and we screamed everything, like everything in the kitchen. Think we tried, you know, just to see what we could do on the moms and stuff. And it was just, we could keep the population very low, but we couldn't get them to zero. And that was really the only thing to me that was like, just a super challenge, because they, you know, a percentage of them, are always immune to whatever the hell we hit

them. That sounds hardcore. What other pests and insects did you deal with

that was really the only one that was a pain in the ass. I mean, we had a couple of plants that had a couple of meal, mealy bugs that were able to like very quickly, Spot hit, and that wasn't a big deal to treat on the outdoor I had seen on other people's grows spider mites, broad by white fly and septoria. Spider mites, white fly and satoria seem to be the biggest one, and there's aggressive forms of septoria in Thailand, that make the stuff that you guys deal with in the states of like nothing like stuff that will go from like first detection to your entire bro, my God, there's one that's allegedly as fast as four days. So if you are not putting probiotics on your fields. Like, nope. Like, you're, you're completely up, you know. But that's where, you know, hey, if you're applying liquid IMO and liquid I PMO to your plants, like, I like to apply liquid IMO one week, and then lactobacillus or ipmo the next week. And just kind of alternate or ipmo, and then lactobacillus one of the other. But if you're doing that on a rotation up until, you know, week three or four flower, you're simply not going to have problems, you know. And we were watering, I PMO every third watering, we actually just stopped making IMO. And we're only making ipmo because we figured out how it's everything in the IMO, isn't it as well. So kind of more like an advanced IMO, really. What the other cool thing with the ipmo is, so IPM has multiple modes of action, right? So you have, you're collecting fungi that will actively feed on and kill the local insects, right? So that's one component of it, the byproduct of that process of the fungi breaking down the Titan in the insect, an insect breath is titanate, which is great plant food, but also an immune response SAR promoter in the plant. So it'll help increase the plant's own immune response. The plant's going to make more defenses against insects thinking, you know, it's the same as if the plant has a lot of aphids on it, and it can detect, you know, the waste and stuff from those aphids at that same kind of thing. So it's now producing more terpenes and more, you know, anti insect offenses, because it's getting that Titan age directly into the root system, or on the, you know, through it foliarly. So you kind of have this multi mode action with the ipmo That's very different than, you know, a lot of the other bio controls that are out there.

Man, that is so cool. The power of microbes, the magic of microbes. Rooted leaf nutrients, baby, that's right. Rootedleaf.com code, growcast for the carbon based, no pH necessary. Wonderfully balanced nutrient line, you've heard Nick on the show talking about this amazing line, I use it my garden. I absolutely love it. We're about to embark on a seed COVID hunt using all of rooted leaf. It's based on plant ferment extracts, that's right. So it's plant based. It's got what your plants need, and it's got so much carbon in it. Nick has explained before the importance of getting carbon into the soil, and how much more carbon is included in rooted leaf than virtually any other line that you can find on the market. Now my favorite part about rooted about rooted leaf no pH in. This was the first thing that I tested when Nick said it on the show. And in fact, I use filtered water and put my rooted leaf in. That's it. Skip the pH. It's a really, really good application, and your plants are gonna love it. They're gonna start ripping as soon as that dank sauce hits the roots. Rootedleaf.com code growcast for a whopping 20% off. Grab a starter kit. Works in any medium. We absolutely love rooted leaf over here, and we got Nick coming back on the show to break down more nutrient science. They've got a brand new version of lush green that's their nitrogen supplement, and the lush green v2 is just ripping so check it out. Everybody, go and give it a try. Code grow cast for 20% off rootedleaf.com Good for your microbes, good for your worms. No need to pH, you're gonna love these amazing carbon, rich nutrients. Shout out to rooted leaf. Code, growcast always@rootedleaf.com so it's cool to hear from. You and working with a guy who invented the ipmo, you know, I mean, Chris Trump, but you were just on the Grow cast TV recently talking to the members about super labs, man. And first of all, you never told me that you were kind of the person to discover that, like you invented that, essentially. And then also when you told the story to the members, basically it was like a it was like a professor chemical X type incident that it was discovered through an accident while we're on the subject of microbes. Tell me about super labs, man, and tell that story. So

we were making labs to go around with at this place I was working at. And we also had some spirulina, which you're using spirulina, a lot of people don't know. You can take Spirulina and mix it into some water at like, you know, a teaspoon or so for, you know, spray bottle, like the small, squat ones that you get at the dollar store, and you put a teaspoon in there, and you spray the pops of your what do you call them, the Grow plugs, or Rockwell. Whenever you use them, when you're doing clones or seedling, you can spray the tops of them with that, and it'll prevent algae growth, like it kills the algae, as it can kind of, you know, chemical, and it prevents other types of algae growing. So we had a little bit of that, or to mix up for that, for spraying on the top of that. And we were making labs. We had the labs open, you know, where mixing it all up, and we're talking, and I don't know, we got kind of animated and spirulina bag over, and it fell over on the table and, like, a bunch spilled into the lactobacillus. And it was like, well, it's organic. The lactobacillus isn't going to get hurt by it. Like, might as well just let it go and see what happens. So put the lid on it, and then, you know, a couple weeks later, or a couple days later, we open it up, and it's like this neon blue, like, like, you know, same color, like the Zoom logo. It's like this fluorescent blue. And what's cool is, when you take it and you put it into, like a zip lock, and you hold it up to the sun, it goes back and forth, depending on the depending on the refraction, like red to blue, it's like this very bizarre color. You can't really describe it, but we kind of didn't know what was in it. So kind of did some research, did some research, did some research, and realized that the plant, or it actually had isolated the phycocyanin from the spirulina. So the next time, we took about a pound of spirulina into a five gallon bucket and brewed that up, and that had some great results with it, able to resurrect some peppers, my expert. Got to water a bunch of peppers, and all the leaves were dead, and they were like, crispy, you know, the roots were like, rock hard. So I was like, Well, fuck like, it's a lot of money with the pepper seeds that you just fucking killed. I was very concerned, so I mixed up some of the lactobacillus with water, and I watered them all, and about 80% of them had new branch growth that every dead leaf node, and it resurrected about 80% of the dead ones that I had, I had watered with it. So it was like, Holy crap. Like, what is in this stuff that we can do that? Then we started screwing around it, and then realized that kind of got the idea of, well, maybe if we combine some of the kelp with it, kind of give it some of the oxygens and stuff to help accelerate it and the uptake and stuff like that. So we started adding a small percentage of the kelp, and it really does make a difference compared to the super labs alone. But yeah, that's that's the story of super labs getting invented and but yes, it's vital sign, and basically is the most complicated molecule to produce, as far as energy goes for your Chlorophyll A through E group, so you can basically produce that with the spirulina and then add that directly to the plant fully earlier, through the root system. I know also Luna, who as a good friend of mine as well. She's doing a bunch of work with Bico sign, and interested to kind of see her she's doing it with a different extraction method. So I'm kind of interested to kind of see if there's a difference in the contingencies between the lactobacillus version versus the straight powdered version, and seeing if the lacto synergy really makes a difference or not. So that's kind of something that I'm excited to find out. But I can tell you, if you have injured plants, like your plants get hit by a hail storm, you're fighting insects or some kind of mold problem, or some kind of other issue that the plants kind of need just to go a little bit of extra help, kind of boost them up. You can kind of use this as a way to kind of, you know, give those plants a better, faster chance to heal, and kind of accelerate their growth rate. It makes the plants grow considerably faster for a short period of time. And, you know, has all the benefits of lactobacillus as well, as far as the anti fungal component.

And you literally tipped it in on accident. That's fucking hilarious, man. Very cool stuff. Obviously you saw, like, major improvements, and you saw that it was, like, added a whole new level to the labs. Did you ever, is this something you could, like, put out there, you know, either as a recipe or or bottled mailing to people? Oh yeah, actually,

I'm the full SOP for it on my my Instagram. And then, if you go to any of my presentations I did for the, I think, the first two years of the virtual aquaponic cannabis conference. I included it in there, one of the one of my talks in there. I have the full SOP for it on there, so people want to check that out. I may or may not have done a video for the super legend. I don't remember. I'll be frankly, honest with you. Well,

let's do it, man. And potent ponics. Of course, follow potent ponics on Instagram and YouTube. Yeah, super cool, man. It's really cool the work you're doing, and I just love it. The

other thing you can do too with labs, like you can do horsetail with labs, because horsetail has diamond in it, right? So thiamin reduces plant or human ability to uptake vitamin B, so if you like, take too much horsetail, and you could actually have major vitamin B problems, which is very quickly a very serious health issue. Take way, way too much, but you can completely mitigate those issues with doing this lactobatic and throw your horse tail in there and brew that up. Now you have all the vitamin B produced by the horsetail that kind of counteracts the thiamine situation as well, and the low acidity of the lactobacillus also helps break down some of that thiamin as well. So, you know, sometimes you can use lactobacillus to kind of make certain plant brews even more bioavailable, or to make them more catered to, to helping your plant as far as a growth accelerator, like you do with the vitamin D complexes. Another thing too, with your lactobacillus, you really want to maximize it. Add some deeper to the your natural air collection of your lactobacillus species. It will greatly increase the biodiversity of your vitamin B complexes. Which vitamin D to plant makes them grow faster? Oh,

nice. You just grab it from the store that it's that weird milk, right? I've seen a couple people drink that stuff, that kefir, and it's the secret to good labs, is what you're saying,

yeah. So basically do it same way you would traditionally in KNF, except when you combine the rice collection with the milk, just also add some kefir grains, and then you can also use that culture, once you're done, basically see your next culture, which is what I always do, take a ladle sword and use it as your starter for the next one, same as you would like kombucha or anything like that. It's like

that Thai lady who's had the soup going for like, 40 years, the same soup has been boiling. Did you? Did you drink the soup while you were over there? You probably no idea what I'm talking about. Yeah, this was the thing. So, okay, on the subject of microbes, the microbe soup, when you take a look at like home growers in the cannabis space, right, maybe beginner growers, or even more advanced growers, and the way that they think about microbes and approach microbes and apply microbes to their garden, what are some of the biggest, like misconceptions or mistakes that you see them making.

So a couple of one people use the wrong sprayers all the time, so they use, like, a fogger and atomizer and just like, instantly kill all their microbes in application. That's one I see people do quite often, or they'll mix up, like, they'll spray something that, like, kills microbes, like those for, like a anti fungal agent, for, like, killing PM, and then, like, drain it out, maybe give it like a two second rinse, and then immediately put in, like Bavaria bastiana, which is a fungal anti insecticide, and stuff like that. While you're not like, you need to have, like an anti fungal sprayer and an anti microbial spray, like a insect sprayer, and then like a chemical sprayer, like you should have all three separate prayers. Ooh, I like that. Advice protects for them for that purpose. Well, I just thought, if you make it like that coloring book simple, the employees don't screw it up, right? Because at the end of the day, like, it doesn't matter if I know what the hell to do, like the person that's going to be there doing it all the time, but the noise that he has to do it on a Friday needs to not screw it up, right? So that's like, the kind of situation where you have to deal with, especially when you're trying to, like, write SOPs or all this other stuff. If you make things kind of more simple or easier, people tend to, like, not screw it up so much.

No, I like that advice, dude, separate sprayers, if you're using it, especially like a little hand sprayer. Why not get two? One for, like you said, you know, the chemical applications, and the other for, like the microbe applications. And then no impeller pumps, is what you're saying. Only some sort of Diaphragm Pump or something like that, so it doesn't kill the microbes. That's That's good advice. No, no, no, no, no, no Diaphragm Pump.

No, no, no, no. I don't agree with that point, the so, well, no diaphragm pumps are fine, but I think that people go crazy. So the debate between impeller pumps and diaphragm pumps mostly comes from, I shouldn't name it, but a particular group of people that have been around soil science for a long time will leave it around for that, and they're whatever reason. And think that this has any kind of problem with with impellers. Impellers aren't killing microbes. That's completely crazy, like unless you're running super high, high, high RPMs, and then it's not even the impeller, it's killing them. It's the it's the pressure in the in the impeller chamber, that's the problem. So the problem is with atomizers and with foggers, is you have that, that in the foggers, you have that, that vibration disc that kills them through impact, or you have the pressure like used for the atomizers, so that takes killing them on those so you can absolutely use the pump with your thing, as long as you have the sprayers on it. I really like the Rainmaker triple headed nozzles, and they make a couple of different backpack ones. They're not the best quality product. I'll be up front about it, but for 110 bucks, if you blow it up, you know, every six months or a year, who cares? Right? Like, not a big deal. What

about the electrostatic sprayers? Have you seen these? These are like the home grower, foggers, what do you think

about that I have and I still have? So, like, microbes have different polarities too, right? So, like, I think it's cool for, like, if I was trying to pull your feet, but again, that's something I would not. I just, I wouldn't trust it for microbial applications. Hot

take from Steve raisner, okay, I like this. I like this. Yeah, I heard that from wolfman back in the day. But, uh, I'm gonna take your your word for this, one man, and it does make sense, you know, that it would at least kill some or most of them. Well,

again, if impellers were a problem, we wouldn't use them on reef tanks, right? Like, I worked in salt water aquariums for a long time, too, and all these things were not a problem, right? Sterilize

it to kill all the microbes in it. Yeah, exactly. Like,

that's what I'm saying. Like, there's all of these problems that people kind of worry about sometimes in cannabis. I'm just like, you guys, pet stores exist, like, probably near you that have way more extreme environments than a lot of the things that people like to debate in cannabis. And that's just kind of goof kind of goofy to

me. Sometimes interesting. Man, very interesting. Well, that's why we need to dig into it on the show. Okay, so I like that, not counteracting your microbial sprays, whether it's the reason, or rather the way you're applying them or using another product that immediately kills the microbes you just paid for. That's a great piece of advice. What else do you recommend? Or what else do you see out there? People making mistakes,

people go crazy with trichoderma. Is another one that I see people use way too much, though, yes, it's great anti fungal, but it also will obliterate, like, it'll totally over dominate your soil. So if you go crazy with it because you're trying to, like, get rid of root rot or powdery mildew or botrytis, and you way over apply it, you can totally, basically just annihilate your soil biology pretty easily compared to lactobacillus or IMO, applications which will have the same efficacy, but not that same kind of devastating monoculture on the microbes, yeah, because

you're right, I do see the the trichoderma being used as a very effective IPM, but, uh, like you said, I've also heard of its ability to kind of take over so maintain the balance, is what you're saying.

Yep. And that's again, think of it like molders chart, right? I think a lot of people, a lot of your listeners, are familiar with boulders chart. As far as balancing your nutrient right, think of it like a spinning plate on a chopstick. Right? You're trying to keep everything balanced. But if you had too much weight on any part of that plate, it's going to get unbalanced and wobble and then fall and hit the ground, right? So if you have too much potassium or calcium or iron, you're going to start to lock out other nutrients, not to get nutrient lock out of the ratios are out of balance. But if you raise everything or lower everything and equal, then it's okay. So, but microbes work exactly that same way, and I think people don't think of them in that same kind of context, because they're always like, test or not, they're beneficial or like, they they're like in the two things. Rather than seeing it as like a the same way we do with like nutrient web, or, again, molders chart, I still think it's like the best equivalent, where you you have to have the spending nematodes and the spending products and this many, you know, blah, blah, blah, in order for everything to hopefully balance out.

That's a really good point. Man, I love that fucking very well. Said, very well. Said, God damn, this episode flew by, brother. Man, listen, it's always great to hear from you. The Thai travels. Sound insane. Thank you for bringing those genetics to us, bringing it to my community. We're very, very flattered. Man, it's going to be a really cool mini drop before we wrap it up, though, tell us about what you're doing now, just as much as you want to share. Man, I ain't gonna pressure you. It seems like you're, you're gigging, and you got some cool gigs,

yeah, so we have, I'll be well, I'm helping open a nice little shop here in Tennessee. At the moment, we'll be doing. Be more announcements soon. BUTCHER in the national area, keep the last weekend of October open will be our opening weekend, assuming we don't run into any problems. We have a bunch of amazing beverages and some bling and topicals and huge foods and desserts and things that we're going to have available, all uh, compliant with state law. So you guys will be able to come have a great time. And it's a really cool place to go to do some education stuff there. I know we're working. We're going to have a course there with Chris Trump and some other cool people coming up here before too long, that we haven't announced yet. So that's going to be coming up. We have Matt powers will be on deck there. It's going to be kind of like a cool education space that isn't a really cool part of the state, that isn't all that far away from society, but it's certainly a more remote with the lung tradition and growing weed in the part of the state. So it's a really cool, cool place in a cool spot. So that'll be happening. We will also have all those products available through hand compliance stuff, the ones that are hand compliant, at least, available to everyone that wants to get them across the country. So that'll be pretty great. It'd be nice to kind of get that back up and running. It's kind of a brand that I've had around for a while, and some of you guys may or may not have had been to one of my events and handed you some little powder products, you know, screwed up on my stuff.

I was just impressed by the taste man, because, you know, I'm a coffee guy, so when I miss mixed something into my coffee, I don't care how high it gets me if it tastes like shit, I'm not interested. And yours was virtually tasteless. I mean, it was tasteless, to be honest.

Good shit. Really, good shit. Yeah, I spent a lot of time working on that formula, kind of Since 20, 2015, or 16, and that really perfected it. And they've kind of tweaked it and tweaked it and tweaked it as we learned things. And it's definitely different than anything else that's out there on the market. I mean, you feel it within a minute or two. There's no other products that you can drink like that, that you're feeling you know almost instantly. So we've also had seizure, the seizure version we have with it with patients as fast as 46 second top seizures, with seizing patients. So we've and also treated pediatric patients and done with six months old. So we've really had a chance to work with all spectrums in the cannabis industry with this product, and we're really proud of it, and I've put a lot of that time and effort into developing it. So we're going to have that available coffees, hot Cocos, it's super awesome, like fruit energy drinks and that are all organic. And, yeah, it's gonna be great. And then also have a really cool project. They'll be announcing, well, we'll wait till we get up there, but in February, we have a really neat project I'll be working with, with a couple of other awesome people that I'll leave anonymous for now, but you guys are gonna like it and and one of the newer markets, so that's going to be great. And looking forward to that. And, yeah, get a chance to kind of take a couple months off in between, hang out with my family over the winter, and my sister's having a kid, so super stoked to go hang out see her and and the new munchkin. So in between project, so it'll be good times. But, but, yeah, if you're in in the Tennessee area, let me know. We'll have some stuff available for you guys here soon. Very

cool, man. You keep it up. Keep rambling. I fucking love the the travels and the work that you're doing, and keep doing what you do best man, I always appreciate you coming on the show to educate so thank you, Steve for being a good friend in the cannabis industry and also being an awesome also being an awesome guest and friend of grow cast.

Oh yeah, yeah, no. And when I did stop bucking the Oklahoma there for a couple days, I made sure to see Jordan twice.

We actually, what did we do? We smoked like a huge infused rosin joint in the middle of a dust storm, like outside in the middle of a dust storm. Did I dream that? Did I fever dream that? Or did that really happen? Steve,

so that was really funny. No. So we have, so anyone we have, like, a straight up haboob at his house, like it was, like, the kind of storm you see, like in the in the movie where, like, there's just blind giant red cloud coming because, like, a couple, like, near where he is, they, they tore all the grass up, or whatever. So there's when the wind, this outflow from the thunderstorm, hit. It was like this giant wall of red that blew in. And it was crazy, but it looked like we had revived, like, five years in the desert after, like, that joint. All right, we'll see you soon, though. Man, we should have been like we went to Burning. Man, yeah, totally

it was. We literally looked like we came back in from the wilderness. We had like the raccoon eyes. I dirt, my teeth. It was always legendary to see you, man, and I'm gonna come visit you next time. So I'll come up there and we'll fucking smoke one down. We'll smoke a legal. Google, CBD hemp joint. That'll be dope.

Oh no, we have THC here. There's

legal. THC, hemp joint. Let's go. THC, a

10 a bunch of other things that are hemp derived. THC, so functionally, the same thing. Stay

tuned. Listener, you know that I'm going to be streaming from that event when I go up there and see him. Steve, where can people follow you?

Yeah, you can find me at potentponics, on town, cloud, YouTube, iTunes, Spotify all the things. You can check out the awesome resources we have over@potentponics.com including the open nutrient project, which you're trying to formulate different stuff from things that we talked about today, especially lactobacillus. Perman, I have a whole database of plants on there so you can find what's what's high in the nutrients that you want on there based on what plants you have available. And you can also find us over at depth smoke show, D, A T smoke show on Wednesdays, where we have revolving cast of characters over there that hang out and talk about cannabis stuff while growers and cannabis personality. So even Jordan pops in over there once, a lot.

That's right, I'll see you over there on dat smoke show. Everybody, thank you for the genetics. Steve, really looking forward to that the Thai connection. It's dropping soon. Members get it first grow cast podcast.com/membership, of course, and we'll see you next time, everybody, thank you for tuning in. I appreciate each and every one of you listeners. This is Steve raisner and Jordan River signing off, saying, Be safe out there, everybody, and grow smarter. That's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in, everybody. I appreciate each and every one of you listeners, and especially you members. Check out membership at growcast podcast.com/membership I'm doing streams every single Wednesday, hundreds of hours of bonus content. If you like this show, you'll love our membership program. Come and see us. We'll take care of any problems in your garden. We're hanging out in the discord every single day. You can come and smoke and chat with me, and we have so much in store for you, resources, giveaways and so much more. Grow cast podcast.com/membership, see it all at growcast podcast.com, the seeds, the classes, and we're gonna keep working tirelessly for you members of the cannabis community. I just appreciate you tuning in, though. I hope you're doing awesome things in your garden. We've got some more stuff lined up for you on this feed. We're gonna be doing some live streams that are public facing, and we're gonna be doing some video content for this show, so you'll be able to watch on video on YouTube. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Everybody. Don't touch that dial. Go do something amazing. Go grow something awesome. I'll see you next time bye, bye. You

so I was like, Well, fuck like, it's a lot of money with pepper seed that you just fucking killed. I was very pissed off. I.