✌️ Facultative Anaerobes, Ferments for Cannabis, and Soil Tips, with Weedshouldtastegood
12:52PM Jan 28, 2025
Speakers:
Jordan River
Keywords:
facultative anaerobes
fermented plant extracts
living soil
microbial interactions
hybrid vigor
foliar spraying
Korean Natural Farming
heirloom genetics
soil amendments
plant nutrition
grow classes
community building
cannabis breeding
soil microbes
organic gardening
Greetings, cultivators worldwide. Jordan River here back with more grow cast, and it's good vibes. Today we have weed should taste good. Miles is back on the show. You guys love him. He's a breeder. He's a natural farmer. He's working with build the soil. He's putting out ferments. Today's episode is awesome. We dive into biology and soil growing and making your own ferments and breeding and just about everything. You also get into Miles' philosophy a little bit here. I know you're gonna love today's episode before we jump into it, though. Shout out to homegrown VA. That's right, our choice hydro store partners in Richmond, Virginia, we were just up there for the riser rich breeder workshop. What an amazing weekend that was. Shout out to all the VA grow mes. Shout out to the East Coast chapter of our membership, and shout out to homegrown VA for hosting us. Homegrown VA is an amazing hydro store. They're legacy owned. They know what they're talking about if you need garden advice, and they have a great selection, the staff, the selection, the space, it's all amazing. And they support the community with education. Homegrown VA not only hosts grow cast, grow classes. They do classes all the time, free workshops, master classes, instructionals, how tos, really, really cool stuff from beginner to advanced. Homegrown VA is our choice store in the Richmond, Virginia area. Thank you to homegrown VA for not only being a great hydro store, but supporting the community and supporting grow cast through our education. So keep it up. And if you're ever in the Richmond area, you know where to go home. Grown. Va, we love them. Great selection, great staff, tons of knowledge. And check out all those awesome classes that they put on. Thank you to homegrown. Va, find them at 1704 Arlington road up in Richmond. Really nice location and a pop on it. Tell them that growcast sent you. Alright, let's get into it with we should taste good. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello, podcast listeners. You are now listening to growcast. 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. Send this link to a grower. It's how you can help us out the most, or turn someone on to growing for the first time, that helps us on our mission of overgrow. See everything that we're doing at growcast podcast.com you'll find it all there, the seeds that membership, the classes. I appreciate you members so much, and every single one of you listeners today, we have a return friend of the show, very excited to speak to the man himself, natural farmer, breeder, clothing apparel line designer. He's a good guy. He's on the line again. Weed should taste good. Miles is here. What's up? Miles, how you doing? Man,
good. Thanks. I'm doing great, man, thanks for having me. Jordan. I love it. Everything good as
they say, Your reputation precedes you, my friend. Thank you for coming back on the show. My audience loves the weed should taste good. Episodes again, if you guys don't know weed should taste good, hit them up on Instagram, at weed should taste good as well as the website, right?
Yeah, we should taste good.com.
That's where you can find them. But I know you loyal. Grow cast. Listeners are excited for a return episode. Miles, what have you been up to? Man, it's been a minute since we've spoken. Tell me about the travels and the classes and the seeds and all that.
Yeah. Man, I've been, I've been doing well, everything great. I've been kind of the main focus has been my ferment, the fermented plant extracts and working with build a soil my distributor on getting those, you know, far and wide and as many grow stores and grows as possible. That's been kind of the main focus for the past year, year and a half. And then, yeah, still doing seeds. I did a, I did some work with a heirloom Balochistan land race from North Pakistan. Wow, that I crossed to a bunch of different good stuff and seen some great results from and but the teaching and the classes and speaking gigs and throwing little events has really been my focus. Is, like, because we did, we did all these trade shows, you know, we did like, you know, all of them, knee can Lucky Leaf into, like, all the trade shows, and they're fun and all, but like, you pay all this money, you get a booth, and like, you know, you hope your crowd shows up, and some of your people show up, and there's a bunch of people that darn into what you're doing, and and I eventually, I was just like, man, for the money we spent getting these booths at these expos, we could just throw our own we could just get our own venue, have Our crowd out do something really specific for what we're our people are about. Yes, you know, when I seen you doing the same thing, like with the class, I attended your Denver class with Queen of the Sun grows, that was such a great event. Like, oh, thank you. Great, great information, bro. I had so much fun as and you attracted such a cool crowd. And then it was like, all my people were there that I don't ever get to see. You know, I was like, oh shit, grow cast. Like, pull them out, and everybody's so bro, and honestly, like, Y'all inspire me to, like, to, like, do a similar thing, to be like, Wow. Like, y'all got such a cool crew. Like, everybody down with grow cast is, like, just about it, and like, good heart, and it's all love. And that's. That's the culture and the community that I want to create and cultivate, and within our within the bigger ganja scene, you know, we're really pulling together like the heart, and that means a lot to me. I appreciate bro. I appreciate you so much, dude. I love what you do, and I love the, yeah, I love the vibe you build. So super inspired always.
I don't want to like, you know, blow smoke either here, but it's very impressive what you've done. Man, like you said, working with build a soil with your plant, ferment line, and like, how deeply you've come to understand this plant. I look at what you're doing, I'm like, Damn, that's fucking cool. Your clothing line. Man, I would say that you have one of the strongest brands in cannabis, the strongest brand in cannabis, to be honest. And, yeah, I don't know it likewise, dude, that means a lot that you say that, that like you're inspired by stuff I've done, I feel the same way. And it was a, it was a blast when we were all hanging out right the the soil class with Alexandria and the TETRA meetup, that was some fun times, man, it's good. Like you say good vibes.
Yeah, good good things is a great as just grateful for Denver vibes that we can all get together with. Like is good timing our class and your event. So that's cool. Yeah, everything great. And another, another thing that I really love, that you guys did real quick was that your little your like cup thing in Oklahoma, like I liked, how y'all did the like personalized cups where it was like, instead of like, best, this best that it was like, Jordan's favorite, or,
thank you, man, I hadn't seen anyone do that before. Yeah, exactly. Farmer John picked his favorite. All the all the guest speakers got to pick their favorite flower.
Yes, and that is so cool, because it creates like, this personal connection. Was like, yo. I didn't know this guy, but, like, he showed up, he taught he talked to us about something. I learned something from him, and then he told me my Herb was his favorite. Like, there's, like, really create something personal and the connection. And I was like, Man, that is a fucking good idea. I gotta do that. Like, I'm gonna use that one. That's such a good I love it.
That's killer. And you should have seen Farmer John, by the way. He was like, torn. He was like devastated, having to pick between, between a few of his favorites. It's great, man. It's great. Well, listen, today we're going to get into all the things that we just mentioned. I want to talk about your ferments. I want to talk about the breeding work that you've been doing and all of that before that, though, before we get off of classes, what do you have coming up? Where can people find you in the near future?
Yes, give thanks. So coming right up, October 20, 21 we got this little event out here in in western Colorado at Build a soil. This is the first time we've ever thrown an event at the retail store, which basically like a vendor's day. We do this at other grow stores all the time for build a soil products. We go to Chicago, we go to, you know, we go around to distributors and and talk about our products. But we've never done that here at our store. I've got Jeremy's store, so the day one, October 20 in Montrose, Colorado, is kind of an open house, little smoke session. Gonna be some glass blowers there and then. And you can enter, like you can if you and then, day two is a cup at a private location, october 21 Saturday, and that will be taking entries for the cup on Friday and Saturday. Will be talking about living soil. There'll be some educational stuff, some background and learning about the history of build the soil and the evolution of it. There'll be some Q and A sessions with with myself and Jeremy and some of the other build a soil product crew, Portal. Nick new portal will be doing a talk about the superiority of living soil herb for resin production, particularly because he's a hash maker, and then tuned into that. So that's, that's this that's in a couple weeks in October, uh, end of October here in western Colorado, that's called the build a soil days living soil cup. And that's a and I took a note out of your book, and I got a couple personalized trophies for that one I got. I was like, this one's for Jordan, bro,
man, I would love to get out there for that. We were just talking off air. I'm gonna see if I can, like, make it happen. Get
out there, bro. Keep me posted. If you can make it, like I said, I'll put you up. We'll make it.
Oh, you're awesome. That's fucking so dope. Check it out. Everybody living soil cup and shout out to build a soil man, doing it big. Another really strong brand in cannabis. But listen, let's go. Let's go after that topic. You know, working with Jeremy That's gotta be fucking awesome. And dealing with so many growers now that you have a distributor in the respected and renowned build of soil, let's talk about what you've learned, or what we haven't learned. To be more specifically like after speaking with so many people in this field, living soil, liquid organics, ferments, everything you do, what would you consider to be some misconceptions that we hold as home growers, commercial growers, organic growers, or mistakes that you see people make a lot when it comes to this sort of thing?
Yeah, good question. Well, I'll say the most common thing I see that I don't love about people just going living soil. Usually in the first couple years, when they do it is the tendency to grow in small pots, in like a three or a five gallon pot, or even smaller sometimes, right? And you can, you can put a crop out, you can make a good living. So crop in that but, but the concept that we really push is these larger pots, like a living a bed that takes up your entire, or most of the footprint of your light, and the more soil you use, the more nutrition you can provide for those roots. And also, when you're in a larger bed of soil, you can just you don't have to transplant or you don't have to reuse this. You reuse the soil. You don't have to do anything in between harvests. You basically re amend and put your plant you harvest, re amend, and put your plants right back into the soil the old ones came out of when you grow in a three gallon pot, like, you got to pull the root ball out and shake it out. It's all tight and densely bound up in there. So I see that a lot of like, grow, and it breaks my heart, because I'm like, Man, you'd be getting, like, a lot bigger yields, better crops, everything, if you just went up into a bed, and the only, the only thing I see that really stops people doing that is renting when you, when you're in a small, when you're in a grown in a space, you want to be able to pick everything up and move it, just in case. True, a bed doesn't provide that. But, I mean, even if you did 35 like 235 gallon pots, two Earth boxes, something, I mean, just the bigger, basically, the bigger soil mass, and not necessarily in depth, but in footprint, because I don't think you need more than 1518, inches of soil to start out with in living so, but yeah, big pots will make a big difference, or just go the living soil beds the way we teach your way. Jeremy teaches on build a soil doc, the YouTube channel. So, yeah, big soil, big roots, big shoots. That's, yeah, that's kind of the one of the main tenants of living soil that I see kind of shunned by new living soil growers. And
they're coming over from a different style, usually, right? And they're like, Okay, these are the pots that I have. I'm going to run it the same way, but you're right. How much are they missing out on when every time you do a run, you have to remix your soil. Essentially, you, like you said, you pull out the root ball. Most of the time. They dump out the soil out of the pot, they put it into a big pile. They might re amend it, right? But that's breaking up all that mycelial network, all of the things that could like be super charging. You guard your garden if you just let it sit. Is that we think the main reason why big pots are better for this type of growing? Yeah, that's
along those lines. I think that, like, well, one like the process you just described, of dumping out the soil, remixing it, repotting, that's all work. That's time. Time is money. You know, I'm like, we only got so much hours in a day, every one of us, but I think that it's like your nutritional density, like a small pot, it's like a little, small bowl of food, and a plant can only eat so much out of that pot that's available in the form of nutrition, organic matter in the soil. And once that bowl of food is empty, that plant is is struggling, and it needs more input. It needs more input. When you got a bigger pot, you got, like, more more room for food in the bowl, way more minerals in there. Yeah, and the roots can the roots don't stop growing and looking for it. The mycelium network doesn't limit itself in how far it will, like, expand to translocate nutrients from organic matter to the roots. So the bigger soil is key. It's just, it's just one of the things that and I mean, there's all kinds of big pots, big beds, Sub irrigated planters, there's all kinds of options. But like you said, people are coming from another grow system, like rockwool or cocoa or just peat and perlite and and this is the, one of the main differences between those two of saying, like, oh well, I've never seen a four by four bed of soil underneath one light. Like, that's that's unique to this system, to this style of growing. So people are kind of slow to catch on. I feel like sometimes, but when they do, when, when they switch. I never seen anyone go back. Nobody ever goes back from a bed to small pots. Yeah, that's true. I
will, I will agree with that. I don't think that's something I've seen when it comes to a soil grower. So I love what you recommend instead, the first thing, or one of the things that you said, was an Earth Box. Those Earth boxes are so fucking Nice, dude. I am blown away. I mean, I knew they were going to be easy and work well, but Jesus Christ, it's like autopilot. And if you're in like, an apartment, or you're renting, like you said, you can still get away with it. I feel like it's way less dirty from just the way that it's constructed to the fabric mulch thing that you put over, like, makes it look really clean, and you're not, like, spilling out soil, dude. I am blown away by that, by that technology, and it seems to be one of the easiest ways to grow, like, premium organic cannabis, and still have it contained. You're not, you don't have this, like, massive, wormy, out of control thing. Oh,
those, those are great, those, uh, Sub irrigated planters. What's the other one? There's another one called a city picker, a city picker box. Oh, I haven't seen that the What's it? There's a. Auto pots are, like, kind of they're another form of Sub irrigated planter. But yeah, the concept is that you have your soil mass and you have a little tiny air gap, like under the soil there's a little bit of air, and then beneath that air, there's a wicked water layer, which so you have a little bit of soil touching this water, but in this air space, like certain contacts points, and that water layer just wicks up through that contact point into the rest of the soil and maintains moisture throughout. And that's why, like you're saying, it's all it's it's autopilot, it's easy, it's you just sit there, you keep that little bottom reservoir full with nutrient solution, with water, with some microbes, and yeah, the soil just stays, stays gum. Yeah,
yeah. I do think it's probably the best way to teach a first time grower how to grow, honestly, because it's like, pour water down this tube, over and under. Watering is such a major problem. And that sub irrigation is just, it's fucking gold. And so I think that's great. The other thing I would say is, you know, my last few runs, I've been doing a liquid organic right? There are a lot of product lines out there. You have one of them that are 100% microbe enriched, microbe friendly, worm friendly, all the things that we worry about when we think about traditional fertilizers, right? Forever chemicals, polluting waterways, all that stuff isn't really a problem when you choose these, like liquid organics, and I think that if you're not going to go into a bigger pot, Your other option is to provide that mineral content, like you said, through a different source. That's not a salt fertilizer, but like a liquid organic it could be a little cleaner in some people's eyes.
Yeah, no, I agree. I think, I mean, it depends which ones you're using, because there's a lot out there, but yeah, it's, it's definitely, like you said, biologically based, biologically charges. It's using biology and respecting the biology that's there, instead of just providing something that's readily plant available, this, this nutrition that the plant could just uptake immediately and thereby disregard all the microbial interactions that the plant is like evolved millions of years to do to create these like these symbiotic relationships with bacteria and fungi and all the microbes in the soil. When you disregard that and you just feed fertilizer that's readily available, certain parts of the plant like, stop functioning because they get lazy. They're like, I got the nutrition. I don't need to be friends with a microbe to get what I need. I'll just, I'll just get take it from the from the fertilizer. Screw the microbes. When you lose that by the biological Association, affiliation, whatever you know, call it, when you lose that plant, roots to soil microbes interaction. You lose quality your crop. Quality of your crop goes down. It might look dank, it might yield good, but the actual like finer point quality, the actual terpene density and nuances of the flavor that starts to diminish when you when, when you step away from those biological interactions in the
soil. I think that's why people who are using bottled salt fertilizers go syngene so much. I think that's why you see these people like adding microbes and they have to reapply. But I think there's a reason why I don't think these people are just spending money on these products for no reason. I think you're right. The interaction was with the microbes and maintaining some level of that exchange seems to be a key to quality in a lot of people's minds in this community, I would say 100%
even outside of our like, yeah, there's very it's almost hard to find somebody out there in the ganja game as a grower who won't admit to what You just said that at least adding biology helps in a synthetic system, let alone saying, oh, living soil always creates a higher quality product. Like, not everybody's gonna put a lot of people, almost everybody's gonna agree. Adding biology is gonna increase quality.
I've certainly seen a difference. Yeah, I'll just
lean into that. Like, more biology more like lean, lean. It
exactly, exactly. I think that we agree on more as a community, and we tend to focus on the things that divide us, but yours are just, you know, loaded with, like, a different type of of microbe, right? When you talk about your ferments, we're talking about very specific processes going on, right? Can you talk about the science behind that? And like these facultative anaerobes, these these microbes that exist in this like no oxygen environment, and then you put them into the soil where there is oxygen, and they kind of change and do shit. What can you teach us about your ferments specifically and how they work for
sure? So my ferments utilize a specific family of bacteria called Lactobacillus. These are commonly found in the stomachs of ruminant grazing animals, on the surfaces of leaves, in water puddles. They're found they're ubiquitous. These microbes are. Everywhere all the time. It's very hard to find a place on earth where you're not going to find some form of lactobacillus just naturally occur. Like you said, they're facultative, so they will live in both air, with air and without air. So they'll live underwater, or they'll live in fog or in dew, like so lactobacillus will will live with or without water, and with or without air. Lactobacillus also is anti pathogenic. So it's generally a good guy. It fights off the bad guys. It's saprophytic, which means it breaks down organic matter. It eats dead and decaying things, which means it doesn't eat living things. It won't kill living things, and it protects living things from things that would hurt them, that's anti pathogenic and saprophytic. So it's it these, then the most important, one of the most important descriptions of these, of these microbes, is that they're micro, aerophilic, which means it's relates to being facultative, where they can live in water or not water. They can live in air or not air. But they prefer environments that have less oxygen than the atmosphere, oh, not zero oxygen. So they're micro aerophilic. So they prefer places with less o2 less dissolved oxygen than just out in the air. They'll exist out in the air, open air, but they prefer and that's the soil that the soil is the place where there's less oxygen than out in out in the air, out in the world, exposed to oxygen. So once you know these things about lactobacillus, you can kind of start to harness it and use it in different ways and understand how it works in your compost pile, in your soil, in a ferment and and that that's kind of where I ran with it was saying, this is what these microbes do. Here's what I can do with them. And of course, what I do with them is based on ancient, old techniques that are that are practiced in different different iterations, but all around the world to this day, by by natural farmers, by people who are outside of the region of the chemical fertilizer industry, people, subsistence farmers, a lot of I've talked to people about down in Mexico, Chiapas farmers using this technique that's ancient, using milk and water and plant matter and these, yeah, so, so what we're doing is really just resurrecting and and trying to carry the torch of these ancient practices knowledge. Yeah, that's that's just been over, covered slightly in the last several generations by the whole Better Living Through Chemistry, industrial agriculture model. We tend to
swing too far, you know?
Well, yeah, I mean, it's we got, we got where we're at because of it. So you gotta so we got, we got where we're at with all technology, able to do these podcasts and connect all over the world. Exactly. We got here from industrial AG, but we're not, I don't believe we're going to get to the next place solely using it. We have to create this continuity from the ancient practices into modern and integrate them into the modern I love that. And, yeah, that's
absolutely right. Lactobacillus, though, this drives your whole process. Everything you do is based around this microbe, and what applying it to different recipes, essentially of organic matter and which contain different levels of minerals, is that, like the name of the game for your product development, more or
less, it's like the same process I use and I substitute out different food sources. So you know how you are. You are what you eat, you know, and microbes are the same way. And our leavings, our waste products, are relative to what we eat. So when a when you feed these microbes just rice or wheat bran or something really basic, but nutrient dense, they will create one set of secondary metabolites is what we call this is like the the waste product of the microbes in the bacterial secondary metabolite. So if I feed my microbes something green and leafy, their secondary metabolites are going to relate more to the nutrition that they found in that green leafy plant matter, food source. Then, if I feed them a bunch of peaches or fruit, their waste product, their secondary metabolites will reflect their food source. And different food sources can these resulting secondary metabolites, and the different food sources can provide really targeted, not just nutrition, I mean, because these ferments provide some nutrition, but primarily they're providing bio stimulants, enzymes, organic acids, all kinds of different secondary metabolites by bacterial creations from the plant matter. And that's going to be really what's prime. Entirely affecting the soil in different ways.
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So I would love to talk to you about what you've learned or what's changed in recent time, like anything this year that maybe shifted your perspective on this process? I bet that you do a lot of different recipes and testing and things like that. What have you found as far as new information in your mind when creating these
ferments? So a couple things that have been helpful. One is foliar spraying the diluting my product and then spraying it on the plants is a real game changer. And I notice it almost every time I do it, the benefits, and I get a lot of feedback from that another so that's kind of basic. I put it's on the label so, but do it follow it? But one thing for people making their own that, that I've kind of developed, and I I don't necessarily do this on all mine, but this is about smell reduction, because the product smells funky. The more nitrogen in the food source, the worse the smell. And yeah, so people who can't brew them, or who who want to brew them often, can't, because of the smell is going to stop them. They don't want the smell to, you know, affect family members or something, or just they don't want to smell it. So one trick with that is, at the end of the brew, you can add humic acid powder, and that will reduce the smell a little bit. Another thing I do is, when I brew, I put, I could, I could put, in some cases, for my products, I, again, I don't do this because the smell is part of the part of the benefit of the product or the brand recognition. But I put some activated charcoal in a mesh bag and put it in the brew, and that, again, will reduce the smell at the end,
no kidding, it makes sense, little carbon filter,
yeah, a little carbon filter, a little humic source, something, something going on there, reduces the smell with the humic and the and the carbon and the charcoal. But that's, that's a nice little trick, and I just learned that last, maybe a year before last, I can't remember. And really for me, in terms of developing this thing, it's really about working my farm. I have five acres out here in western Colorado, and really I want to use the farm to support this business. It's a farm to farm product. I make this I grow the plants that I ferment on my farm, or I grow as many as I as I can, as much as the as I can provide for myself I do, and I want to expand that, and I want to enrich my land and make sure that the work I'm doing here is leaving a positive legacy on the soil, so that as I move on in life this this place, keeps reaping the benefits of the work I did here. I love that attitude, man, yeah, man, that's the mission of what, like all of us, ultimately, is like, you know, we're on, we're standing on holy ground. This is, like, this earth, the whole earth, every bit of it is worthy of our attention and care. And that's, that's really the, the bottom line to live in. Soil is that is that this is about the Earth and the water, and it's cool that we can grow dank in our closet with this technique. But ultimately, I feel like it develops something bigger inside of us, like a respect for natural order and the natural ways, and a way to look at nature, not as some place to go and take from, but as a place to receive information from and emulate it for our benefit, rather than just take, take, take.
That's well said, Man, I could not have said that better myself. And I think that like as medicinal cultivators, you're right. We bring that philosophy inside of our homes, and we can control the environment. You basically get to play God in this scenario. And it's just fascinating, because these plants are trying to express and please us so that we proliferate their genetics, right, suffering willingly from the Botany of Desire. Yeah. But a lot of people have that mentality where, where they want it to be as much like the natural processes as possible, and then turned up to optimal conditions, right? So the perfect balance of soil life, the perfect environment. It's interesting. When you take this philosophy inside, do you have any good tips on growing this amazing frosty medicine in living soil? Like again, what are some things that we might not be thinking of, or even any products that you've been adding to your grow recently, like any specific enzymes or stuff like that, just tips on growing good indoor living soil weed
for sure. I'll run through real quick, my kind of go tos, and this is all for the most part, available at build the soil.com. The soil is the most important part like you, that's your nutrient bank and your media. It's it. It's you need it to maintain porosity, for air and for water. You need it to drain properly. So I go with build a soil 3.0 the light works really well also. And if you're commercial, they have an ultra light mix. It's like, guaranteed to be never an issue with heavy metals. So the soil 3.0 root wise soil microbes from the soil. Yeah, Kevin root wise is the man. He's like, really developed a superior product. And that's, that's your base level microbiology. That's what you need in the soil. It's got several different soil microbes, and it's a Yeah, so I always treat soil immediately with root wise, it's your starter pack, yeah. And my ferments, of course, I'll put those in together. No problem at the especially at the beginning, early on, I just treat the soil, get those microbes in there, get them working on the organic matter, breaking it down. Another one I love is the pure protein fish, amino acids. This is a build a soil powdered product. It's dissolves into water really well, and I fully refeed it, primarily in terms of keeping the soil fresh and potent, and what you I would be adding to that soil over time, in between runs and perhaps targeted at different times of growth. The blend the soil, the soil nutrition blend from build the soil that I use is called craft blend. It's kind of their flagship amendment mix and and I always I use a good amount of cow Foss, ooh, in what form? Yeah, bro, powdered. It's kind of getting hard, to a little bit hard to find on a bilis will stop carrying the powdered cow Fauci. It's a soft rock. Phosphate is a similar product, a similar same thing, gypsum, which is calcium sulfate, is another one. I use a good amount. You
like that gypsum? You add a lot of calcium to your to your bed, huh? Yeah.
I mean, the 3.0 has plenty, but over time, calcium is just, it's, it's, to me, more important than nitrogen, even my plants, I don't I very add very little nitrogen.
Seems to be the case. Man, when I'm helping growers, I very rarely see a nitrogen deficiency, like, really rarely. A lot of people see yellowing of any kind, and they're like, Oh, that's a nitrogen deficiency. But I see all sorts of different stuff. And then, like you said, that calcium the plant just chewing through it. And if you're not adding anything in liquid form, especially, you better have enough in there as the as the plant uptakes it and literally jams it into the cell walls, right? It's not coming back. It's not being recycled or reused or anything. It's getting plugged in. So more calcium, you say,
yeah. And the only issue with with adding more calcium is that if, when you get calcium up into the right levels, you can see deficiencies and other things, because it's getting better, more efficient use of the potassium, for instance,
gotta raise all those levels. That's true, yeah, so,
but that's, that's like, good you're getting, like, feeding increasing and plant growth correlating to that. So, yep, yeah, calcium is a big one for me, foliar feeding again and staying. On top of pest management, keeping the yellow traps out to look out for root aphids or anything flying looking I like to get the lights on and look up under the leaves. And you can kind of, if there's anything on the leaves, they show up real easy underneath, like just kind of looking through them. Well,
that's a good piece of advice. You don't twist the leaves over to look at the bottom sides. You literally crouch down and look up at the light.
That helps me. Like I can crouch I can turn over leaves all day. But like when you really get under the canopy and look through it from the other direction, the leaves are more translucent from that from underneath than from above. And you can, and when there's a whatever aphid or spider mite pops, right now you can, yeah, there's a little shadow. I like that. That's a good piece of advice, right there. Yeah. And I love getting in the garden. I mean, that's the other thing I love to say, is that, uh, the best thing you can add to the farm or to the garden, is the grower shadow, where it's just, like, just you being in there, being with the plants. And this is how we developed this, like, cool relationship, like you were talking about the Botany of Desire, unwilling body of like we're we're in there being guided by these plants. They're giving off CO or they're giving off oxygen that we're breathing. We're giving off CO two that they're photosynthesizing, like we're co we're co living, and they're guiding us, we're guiding them. And it's really an interspecies relationship that we develop. And when we grow living soil, it's like a multi interspecies really. We're wrangling microbes or ganja, smoking ganja, living with ganja,
yeah, insects and worms, and it all becomes a system, yeah, yeah. It's a natural thing, and it's cooperative between all these different species. Like I said, it gives you a view of nature to emulate for solutions. Yeah, I agree. Man, that's that's a very good, very good piece of advice. I want to drill down a little bit on when you mentioned foliar spraying ferment products. It's funny you say this because it's come up on a different episode recently, because I think people do overlook that. Which types of ferments can we foliar spray, and which ones do you think have the most impact, where your plants just love it.
So I mean, any of my fermented plant extracts, which are water based, can be foliar spray. No problem, all of them, all of mine, for the most part, will benefit. I just put out a willow, one, which might not be as helpful as primarily a root thing, but any of my ferments can be foliar sprayed. The comfrey, I would say I get particularly more noticeable results from perhaps, and also comfrey has, if you study it a little bit, it has some anti pathogenic and anti pest qualities as well. So I feel like the comfrey is a really great one to kind of be your go to for foliar spraying. But any of them can be sprayed. The Korean Natural Farming sugar based ferments are specifically meant to be sprayed in conjunction with other Korean Natural Farming inputs that so that's the KMS thing. Korean Natural Farming is a little bit more nuanced in that you don't it's not just like you make something and you use it, you make a set of things and recombine those that set to create your inputs. And being the ferments in KNF, being sugar based, are not something I would generally apply outside of those KNF formulas, the mixed with other Korean Natural Farming inputs. And that's that's key, that a lot of people make these sugar based ferments, and it's really fun and cool. Then they start dumping them on their plants and spraying them and stuff, and it's like, that's a simple sugar. It's still just a syrup with a plant infused syrup you do not want, like sugars clogging up your stomata and your roots. And you know, those sugars are meant to be fed at super low levels, almost homeopathic levels, and fed in conjunction with other K and F preps. And they're, they're signaling and feeding microbes and signaling the plant in unique ways that so that whole K and F thing is really, really interesting. And I would love to to like, see more people utilize it in in expressive ways for their environment, because it's it's so taps you into what you're growing and where you're growing and how you're growing and what's growing around you.
They have their recipes that's an old style, and they have their recipes. You don't want to be spraying, like you said, plant syrup on your plant too much like you said, you're going to clog the stomata, maybe attract something even I don't know, eggs,
No, exactly, and that's why KNF is so it's more nuanced and it's more in depth. And yeah, we have a we have a great class in Houston. Coming up in November, actually, for the Korean Natural Farming vibes, that's specifically for cannabis. It's can up just for cannabis, and it will, you'll learn all is this the nice class? Yes, this is nice with with touched by cannabis, Chase and Nick portal and myself, we all will pull up in a spot and teach this thing and put the knowledge out there into the community. We do it a couple few times a year, and this is our first one in Texas. And yeah, we always have a great time. It's always kind of an immersive experience where you really get into it and learn a lot from from not only the instructions, but from each other. We have good Q and A we always want to hear from each girl, each person in the class, to, like, address their specific concerns and needs. And yeah, it's a great it's, we just make friends. It's, it's like we were talking about earlier. We're building this vibe and building this community. And we're doing it next down in Texas, November, 10, 11th and 12th.
I would be there, man, I'm on the East Coast. I'm I'm hosting Nova cup in Northern Virginia. Otherwise I would be there. I was, because Houston's not too far from me. But, um, but it's funny. You mentioned that we had touched by cannabis on this show, and as they were talking about the nice glass. So there you go, hearing it from the other side.
Yeah, Jace, he really developed something interesting and something impressive with the nice Tech with which is he took Korean Natural Farming, as instructed by Master Cho who does not grow ganja, who is not into ganja, and he creatively and very meticulously and carefully made this system using the Korean Natural Farming techniques that is designed just for cannabis, specifically indoor, because that's what that's how Jace grows primarily or entirely, is indoor. So I've used elements of his system. Nick runs his system entirely. And Nick actually even, like kind of developed it further and built on it, and built out some of the assets and resources that to teach it. So, yeah, we, yeah, I'm glad you're doing a cup. Was it Nova Virginia you're
doing? If I didn't have that, yeah,
well, we'll get you to one of these. Like I said, just keep it on the radar and we'll, yeah, we'll get you to one of these for sure.
Yeah, I'd like to attend that. That's cool. I like what Jules and Jace are doing out there. Good people, yeah. And I would love just
to see your people. I would love to just meet some grow cast Pete show up at the one of our classes and just be like, Oh, they, they're, they've heard about it through Jordan class. Bro, yeah. Take like, we're gonna bust up the party come through. Yeah, it's all about building community, and you guys build such a good vibe. So we'd love to have, man,
you rock. Okay, geez. This episode's been flying by. I want to make sure that we have enough time to talk about your breeding work. We discussed it a little bit last time. I want to hear what you've been up to. That Mesa cookie still in my mind, fresh in my mind. But what have you been up to? What's been the most recent pollination? All that good jazz.
The most recent pollination. What did I do last year? I did, uh, last year I did an orange turbo f2 that on the in honor of Frenchy cannoli. Oh, it's amazing. Oh, that was one of his favorites trains. Yeah, I got, I got the seeds from MTG seeds, who, I can't remember his name, but that breeder recently passed away. It's, it's crazy. It's like Frenchy gone, and now and then his favorite stream is orange turbo, and that breeder gone. So, geez, man, you know, rest in power all the legends and all these people who built this thing up before us. But so, and that's the nature of breeding, is like we're taking what came before us and developing it into what we think we're going to need in the future. You know? So this is so I did the orange turbo project. I made F twos, and I did some out crossing to it, to kind of citrusy lemon and orange trot, some trop in the mix and stuff like that. And then the winter I did the Balochistan f2 or the Balochistan second inbreeding line that Balochistan comes from this guy, raisani weed, on Instagram and Ira zine, iG, the full power selection, yeah, nice. The Indian land race exchange, yeah, he's so he, he went and, like, kind of found this farmer and distributed his seeds. I don't know how they worked it out, but these seeds that I got came from raisani weed in North Pakistan. And these are, they're not necessarily, like wild land Ray strains. They're heirlooms. These are strains that these North Pakistan growers have been harvesting for hash for generations. And they're it's a tradition there, and the plants are grown at high elevation, similar to, kind of similar to where I'm at, the up here in the Western. Colorado, the foothills of the Rockies. So that was my, yeah. Man, it's a, it's, it's cool that, like, guided by this plant, we're having this cool interaction with the plant and and that the hybrid vigor that comes from those, those North Pakistan land race heirlooms. Man, it's, really interesting, because, like, people don't understand how much vigor is lost when you're always crossing two things that are, like, in some way, way back related, like poly hybrids. They're all coming from, like, Afghan and skunk one and Neville's and, like, there's like, 20 foundational strains that, like, created all, like, all the we're smoking now, yeah, and it was just exponential. It was like 20 foundational strains turned into like 150 next gen strains, and the next gen strains turned into like 1000 you know, now we're up into like 10s and 50, and you gotta, like, do your research hard before you even make a name to make sure somebody on it squatted on, Oh, dude,
that's already that's long gone the name thing. Are you kidding me? We're running out of words. We're running out of
water, as I'm saying. So, like, but. But the point is that when you take something that's completely outside of that poly hybrid gene pool, like a heirloom from North Pakistan that's been inbred out there for generations. That's
hybrid vigor, that that outcross of that pure strain, that's hybrid vigor. Do you observe that? Is it about how fast it grows, how resistant it is? Like, what makes you observe that quality?
Definitely, growth patterns. I wouldn't say speed, but, like, just the way that they stretch and the way that they stack, and the size of the leaves, I definitely see more, like, just monster fat leaves, dinosaur leaves, yeah, yeah. Like just face and chest size, fan leaves. And in just the quality, yeah, and resistances like vigor, in terms of just just standing up against environmental whether it's heat, wet wet roots, dry roots, pests, whatever the environmental inadequacies are they, these hybrid vigor plants seem to stand up to that a lot better, nice, yeah, and the flavors and they, they give these, these meaty, I did a cam, my inbred Chem line to the, the Balochistan, uh huh, and, man, just like, really unique, funky, not cams, like, not getting cam from it, but totally, like cheese and meat and sours and funks and, wow, like old school type of flavors and, um, really nice expressions that that are kind of relatable but unique, like, they're still like, Oh, you don't get that very often, yeah. What
about the Balochistan on its own, is that, is that? What is that lending like? What did that one smell like and taste like, if you've ever grown
the PCK that didn't turn purple, the Pakistan it was like a, like a Afghan, a real specific Afghan, I would say. But it got, it got really big for me, the straight pelocha stands. The buds got like, large. I wouldn't say that it was like a super high yielder, because it didn't stretch that much. But the buds got really large, to the point that I on some of them, I worried about mold. And that's like, where I live in the desert, where it's so low humidity, a bud has to get really fat and juicy to worry about mold on it. And the male I selected was this really, it was like an outlier, and it was like really stacked, short squatty and stacked like that, densely. So the other ones kind of looked like typical males, kind of stretchy and lanky and spread out. And this guy was just, like, short squatty and, like, bud, like, you know, cola looking stacks of male flowers. So that was my selection. When I did the f2 or the second pollination, using that seed stock the first pollination, I used just, I think, three or three males, just to, like, keep all the traits in, you know, I didn't want to exclude any traits on the first pollination. Oh, man,
that's really cool that you're working with those, those genetics that have been, you know, kept for so long, and then doing some real out crossing, essentially, yeah,
and I love the, like, land race thing. I've always messed with weird ties and North Indian and Brazilian seeds that I got and just weird land racing stuff. And, you know, there's all kinds of jokes about the land race strains. All are like, you know, kind of not impressive. And I felt like, Oh, this one is actually this below. To stand is it's an heirloom. It's been bred by guys who know what's up and been doing it forever. So, and when I grew it, I was like, Oh, this is kind of special. It's frosty and does the thing is vigorous and fat buds and all that. So I felt like, Oh, this is one that's worthy of doing this land race outcross breeding thing with and preservation, right? And I still have a bunch of those seeds. Like, I there was, like, six different batches on the drop I bought. And, like, I think I've only used like two of them. I used one. It was a mass tongue. Number one was the main one I used in the breeding. And I popped one of the other ones too, but didn't use it. But, yeah, there's seeds are widely available, and that's cool, though.
Have you what was the weirdest strains that you've run into? Brazil is something that I haven't heard a ton about, or, like, you know, Japan is one of the ones that kind of like you mentioned. I hear it's more like hempy, but it's, it's rare. What are some weird ones that you've seen or heard of?
Brazilian was, was real sativa. I can't remember. There's a name for what they call, kind of the wild ganja down there in Brazil. I can't remember what what it was, but very sativa, as you would think. Sure, so the, I guess, the coolest thing I can say about this, about this whole idea of taking seeds from location and bringing them into your environment and growing them is that one year, me and my my family, me and my parents are up, up in India, in Himalayas, trekking around, going to these ancient like pilgrimage sites, and there's and I got the keen eye, and I'm into plants and nature, so I'm seeing it everywhere, Like while growing wild, growing in people's backyards. And I'm like, freaking out, like losing it, like on the bus going from one like, hike one Trailhead to the next, and I'll see it. And I'm just like, oh my god, what the I got? I want to smell that. I want to see. Apparently, the bus driver, like, recognized this, and he noticed me, and he was like, Mr. Miles, like, here, look at these. He like, we pull up and park and rise. I'm getting off. Mr. Miles, look at these plants over here. Aren't these the ones that you like? Like, he knows what's up. And I'm like, oh yeah. And he's like, these, you can look at they're just on the side of the road. Like, nobody's gonna mind if you hop over this, this little rock wall and look at these and, and that kind of started me on it of being like, oh my god, like, I can actually, like, and they're all pollinated, like, so I'm like, actually pulling seeds out of these plants and heart and, like, harvesting them, drying them out in my hotel room that night. Yeah. So that was really a cool experience to take see and I brought them back. I like, smuggled them back in some tea bags, like, back to the States, and I grew those out. And they were, you know, from the Himalayas to the Appalachians. I was still back east in North Carolina at this point, and I grew those out and, like, they acted all crazy and wild. And I was just like, What the It doesn't look anything like, what it I mean. I mean, I picked plants that were had, like, wide leaves, or hybrid looking leaves. And I, when I brought them back and grew them in North Carolina, they had, like, super narrow they're
like, Nope, we're not gonna express that shit you wanted, right?
It's just like, man, the environment dictates it so much. And they were, yeah, it was really interesting, because I brought other seeds. I probably big no no. But I brought, like, cultivated other plants back from India and grew them, and they all grew like, so weird for summer every the environment just so different that, uh, yes, true,
man, when I even when I was growing some of the land race crosses in my basement in Illinois, all the poly hybrids were doing okay. And then the one land race strain was, your land race Cross was so unhappy, like it was, it was not liking the environment that I put it in. Yeah. I guess it's a drawback. And a benefit of keeping a plant in one place, right? Is, you know, there's a lot of homogeny that takes place when it comes to the traits, but then if you try to take it somewhere else, you might be in for a little bit of a challenge, yeah,
yeah. And it's about the breeding techniques and stuff I was, you know, who knows what kind of wild stuff I was picking off of, whether inbred or just, you know, birds shit it out or, who knows, but it was that it was everywhere up there in a was the state butcher con. That was wild man.
It was magical. Yeah, I was gonna say that. That's, sounds like a wild story, and it was probably like a lifetime memory picking those seeds off in real time.
Nuts, yeah, give thanks for that experience. Thanks to my parents for making me do wild, crazy stuff.
Well, dude, we're at the top of the hour. This episode flew by awesome, awesome updates on the breeding. Love talking to you about the ferments and soil talk. Where can people find you? Brother, let's again. Let's do class, plugs, website, plugs and direct my audience to find weed should taste good,
yes, well, we should taste good.com. Uh, fermented plant extracts.com. I'll shout out, build a soil.com you can find me on there. Uh. I have at weed should taste good on Insta, at fermented plant extracts on Insta. They both have Facebook pages just spelled exactly how they sound. There's the class in November in Houston. We were talking about with touch by cannabis. That's November 10, 11th and 12th in Houston, you can get in touch with me. My email is all over any of these socials. You can hit me in the DMS if you want tickets to that, or if you want tickets to the build a soul days living soil cup that's available on my websites. And that's for the end of October. Yeah, that's in a couple weeks coming right up on us. Geez. October 20 and 21st is that eight days away? The days, yeah, yep, crazy, so yeah, October 20 and 21st is the build a soul cup out here in monstros, Colorado. Get at me on the socials. Hit me up. Look up the YouTube, build a soil YouTube, and watch the two videos I did there for teaching how to make the fermented plant extracts. I The my fertilizer line is pretty unique, not only in like how it works and what it is, but in that I teach people how to make these things, the exactly what's in the bottle. I teach people how to make it for free and for charge. So I have a like for the charge stuff is a little bit more in depth. But on my website, from Ed Plan extracts, I have online courses now that people can just go on download or stream and just I have a couple one hour ones. I have a four hour really nice and in depth one where I teach you how to make all these different inputs and the basis of living soil. And I would urge people to check those out. I do live classes every now and then. And, yeah, everything, everything's just moving. I'm loving the way that the plant is, like taking us all on this journey together. And the people like, like you and you know, Farmer John and Nick and Jace and all these like amazing people that, like the plant, brings into my life, and that brings us together. I'm just so grateful that that, like we have the that we're alive in this time to that we can do this. Yeah, even, even 20 years ago, if you went into ganja, it was something you shut the up about and didn't talk about. You know, you
ever think about how we're like, in a time in history that people are going to study in the future, like, we study the the prohibition era,
100% dude. I think of that because I used to be a jeweler, and, like, a lot of the like, wire wrap stuff, like, doesn't get no attention. And I'm like, yo, someday there's going to be like, a art gallery opening talking about all these, like, there was this time period where these, like Wilkes were like, eating acid, and it got into crystals. And they were, like, started wrapping the crystals and wire. And then people started turning into a crazy art form, and then they started traveling around the world to get through, you know, all this. You know, same way with ganja, it's like, there's, we're kind of like, underappreciated in our time for what we do, and I feel like, especially for, you know, like people like us who are really driven by passion and love for the plant and passion and love for building community, and like just sharing love with people around us. Like, I guarantee this that, I mean, it's my strong belief, and I feel this very strongly, that we'll be viewed very favorably in the course of history, like people like you and me, Jordan, for really, they're gonna, they're gonna look back on the things we do in favor and say the whole world was on this, like sleeping through the wake up call bullshit, and like sleep and like just falling asleep, on the importance of certain things. And there were these other people out there who are, who are about that and bringing that to awareness and showing people those things and teaching it, giving it away for free, building communities around the country will be viewed favorably in the course of history based on our action. And that's why I love what you do.
I completely agree, bro, that's That's well put. And yeah, we are at a time and place in history, man, I'm just glad, like you said, to be able to experience it. This is, this is a wild ride. The cannabis industry is a wild ride, and I'm here for every second of it. I don't like just normalcy miles. You know what I mean? I'd rather have highs and lows. You know what I'm saying? That's
just, that's just natural. You know that everything comes in cycles and waves and yeah, I dig, like, I don't. I'm not against them, like stability in that tip. But it's definitely about just like, finding the balance between those those experiences, because you're bound to have highs and lows. You wouldn't be fun if it was normal all the time. But being able to balance that and being able to really like juggle it is a and and find your path through it. Um, not, not hit the it's not, not like dwell in those extremes is a beautiful way to like to what to live.
Yeah, man, I agree. I agree. I couldn't have said it better myself. Listen, man, this was a dope. Episode. Was nice and educational and a little bit philosophical, and anything you need from grow cast, you just let us know. Okay. Miles,
yeah, I just want to link. Up sometime we got to plan something. Hell yeah, brother,
hot pot. Much love that's what it's all about. We'll get a good at that hot pot with Farmer John. Thank you, dear listener. I appreciate you tuning in and listening to this episode. Stay tuned. We got plenty more coming at you every single Monday. I'll never let you down. This is weed should taste good and Jordan River signing off saying, Be Safe everyone and grow smarter. Yes, one left, that's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to miles from WeChat. Taste good and thank you, dear listener. I appreciate you so much. Before we wrap it up, I want to give some love to AC infinity, my favorite grow gear manufacturers, AC infinity.com, always use code grow cast one five. Grab yourself a new tent, a new light. Grab yourself a grow kit. Expand that grow room, get that veg tent going. So you can do some staggered runs. Code grow cast one, five, works on all the products at AC infinity and the Grow kits, which come with everything you need to get started growing. Of course, AC infinity makes amazing durable tents. They make the best oscillating and inline fans in the game, they make grow lights. They make grow pots. They got scissors. They got protective eyewear. Everything you need is at AC infinity.com, and code grow cast one five is the code you use to save everybody. You're helping us keep our lights on here, and you're supporting an awesome company, our partners, AC infinity. We've been with them for years and years now. I remember discovering them when they just had the cloud line. They're in line fans, and now they have all these goodies, from the cloud Ray oscillator to the cloud forge humidifier, find it all always use code, grow, cast one, five, and thank you. AC infinity. AC infinity.com. All right, everyone, that's all for today. Thank you so much. I appreciate you tuning in. Stay tuned. We got some dope episodes coming up. Sun God is dropping soon. Sun God seeds. If you're a member, you're familiar with this breeder is coming on the show. Guys are gonna love that episode. Hygrozine is coming up. Got a bunch of cool stuff planned. Hope you're killing it in your garden. Stay tuned to this show. Don't touch that dial, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. You.
