🦁 Biochar from Terra Preta, Fungi, and Building a Thriving Rhizosphere, with Mark from Greengro

9:56AM Jan 29, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Mark from GreenGro

Keywords:

biochar benefits

organic gardening

terra preta

Amazonian soil

microbial inoculation

fungal balance

mycorrhizal fungi

green aminos

soil amendments

living soil

rain science grow bags

community cup

soil microbiology

regenerative agriculture

nutrient absorption

Greetings cultivators from around the world. Jordan River here back with more. Growcast, continuing my mission of overgrow. Today we have a brand new guest. Mark from Green Grow is on the line. You know, Green Grow, they are a wonderful provider of soil amendments and living soil and so much more. Mark is here to talk about biochar, to talk about the history of Green Grow, organic gardening and so so much more a very interesting episode, jam packed with lots of knowledge. I know you're gonna absolutely love today's episode, but first, shout out to one of our community cup sponsors and sponsors of this show, I want to thank rain science grow bags for contributing to both this show and the community cup. Shout out to rain science grow bags. You've heard about them on this podcast before, durable mesh grow bags that last a lifetime. Rain science grow bags.com. Code growcast saves you 10% and members of the Order of cultivation getting 20% off their rain science bags. I love these things because, you know, you need those breathable containers so that your roots get the air pruning. But the problem with things like fabric pots is they get real dirty over time, and you gotta replace them. Rain science grow bags last a lifetime. They're durable. They're mesh they're tough, and they have what it takes to survive the environment, indoors, outdoors. Doesn't matter. Grab a white mesh bag, a black mesh bag all the way up to 25 gallons, living soil beds, all the way down to propagation cones, one gallon, three gallon, five gallon, whatever you like. Find it at rain science grow bags.com. Use code growcast and grab some of those grommets on the side so you can easily low stress train your cannabis and one more time. Thank you so much for rain science grow bags for contributing to the community cup. It was so awesome to have them as a sponsor. That event was the most powerful, impactful event we've ever done, and they helped support it. So thank you to Sean and the whole team at rain science. We love you guys. Show support to a great company, and more importantly, they make the best containers around rainscience, grow bags.com. Co growcast. Alright, everyone, let's get into it with Mark from Green Grow 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 tell a friend about grow cast. Turn someone on to growing it's the best thing you can do. And of course, see everything we're up to at growcast. Podcast.com/action there you'll find all the action, the seeds, the membership and the classes, everything's up there. Today we have a brand new guest on the line. I'm very excited to feature this individual and also this brand from the Green Grow. We have the Creator Himself, Mark is on the line for the very first time. How's it going? Mark? Thank you for joining us today. Hi,

Jordan, thank you so much for having us on today. We're very excited and definitely been following your work on the podcast for a while

now. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. We've been following you as well. Of course, Green Grow, the makers of Pride Lands, among many other different products, but the Pride Land soil did land itself in the ryzo Rich super soil grow challenge. He liked your soil. Rise of rich is a very picky individual. And he said that you guys did great. I mean, you were included in that. I was also using your green amino products for a really long time, and still do when I grab a little sack of those things. Absolutely incredible. Man. Great to have you on the show. But why don't we start from the beginning. I'd love to hear from you talk a little bit about yourself. Talk a little bit about the history of green grow and how your product line kind of developed and expanded. Yeah.

I mean, you know, history of green grows, you know, is kind of two fold. I mean, one like, I the only way I learned how to grow when I was a small child was my grandfather owned a ranch, a small ranch that he just taught me, like, kind of biodynamic and organic gardening, pretty much, you know, like 16 raised beds with trellis, and we would make all of our own compost on site. And he would teach me how to, like, crush up all the eggs and then get the, you know, like, you know, break up all like, the remnants of, like the food waste bin, you know, like, not no meat turning that kind of stuff, but like lettuces and like onion tops and like all the different things, right? And then get the worm bin going, you know, and then mix it all together, and then we'd amend the beds in. And as a young kid, you know, he obviously wanted me to do the dirty work, but he taught me all that kind of stuff right from the jump, wow, oh yeah, I was five years old. So like, you know, every year, every summer, I'd visit him, you know, we'd, we'd do that work till I was probably, like, 12, I just remember, like, why? I always ask them, like, Why do your tomatoes and peppers actually taste so good? Because I hated tomatoes, like and growing up in California, I think people don't understand in the East Coast, tomatoes don't really taste good. Out here in the West Coast, people like them. You know, they have like, a little bit of, like a bitter, kind of, like a more of, like an edge to them, right? They're like, people wouldn't grab tomatoes and make a tomato sandwich in California, right? That's not something that's common. They don't. Even

look the same. They're all like, white on the inside and undeveloped, instead of that deep, rich red that just like it just bursts in your mouth. You're right. Not all tomatoes are created equal. That is absolutely true, no.

And I, you know, I just never that. One of my earlier memories is like, why does this taste so much better than what my mom and dad tried to feed me? And he's like, Well, because we grew this and it didn't come from the store. And so right then, I kind of thought about it like, Huh? So if we grow our own fruits and vegetables and they taste way better, maybe there's something to this whole thing of, you know, growing in a community and growing in your local neighborhood, what you can and then getting what you can't from the store, you know. So I love that message. That's kind of what started me on my journey of gardening, but to really dive into it. You know, I was, I think, at the University of California archeology, and I started taking a passion in archeology of agriculture. So, you know, I have a degree in archeology. I stay, I mostly studied Native American cultures. But in my quest for archeology of agriculture, I took about six classes that were like, how different civilizations set up their culture, right? And always in that was agriculture was a piece of it, right? So, you know, I always studied, okay, well, how did people have, you know, in Central and South America was really one of my specialties, right? So, mines Incans, OMAC, I was like, how did they have cities? And people don't really realize this. How did they have cities of 100,000 people, 1000 years ago, 500 years ago, more than almost anywhere in the world? Okay? You can't just wing it with agriculture, right? You have to have planned society. You have to have a planned development. So you can't just mono and poly crop and do some shaman magic on it and it grows. So I'm like, Okay, so we've got to dig into this. What were they doing, you know? And I thought to myself, well, if it worked, then it's got to work today. Yes, so

exactly

when I finally stumbled across basically terra preta in South America. It's basically an anthropocentric soil that is found in the Amazonian Basin region, just outside, kind of like the forested areas. And probably it once was maybe forested at some point. But the native cultures there, over time, would cultivate the soil with what they had. And so the culture there, probably one of the cultures that were really big about using biochar from ancient times was, I wouldn't say proto Incan, but there's a bunch of different tribes out there that are just Incans a catch all phrase, right? But sure, there was, like Amazonian basin cultures right there that were making biochar out of hardwood. And then what they were doing is making sure that they rinsed off all the ash and everything like that, and then they would mix their compost pile, their trash rubbish pile, which is all good stuff, you know, with their biochar, and then they blend it into the field as they were tilling under the remnants of their crops

that is so wild, like utilizing this, this regenerative, yeah, really, it's the Power of the microbe that these people understood, and obviously they didn't understand it the same way we do, but they knew what works. Right I don't want to go off on too far of a left turn here, but I think that, like, people vastly underestimate the intelligence of ancient peoples. And the reality is, like, if we swapped places, like, yeah, they don't know about the internet and they didn't have, like, public schooling and things like that, but they would pick up an iPhone and be able to use it within a couple of hours, whereas if we had to go back there and switch places with them, we would fucking starve. I can't start a fire. Oh, yeah. So it's like, it's amazing how smart they were, how advanced they were, even though they were lacking some like, what we consider basic levels of knowledge, they had this, this system that worked, in this particular instance, harnessing the power of microbiology. It's fucking crazy.

Yeah. I mean, they, they invented, you know, regenerative agriculture with biological like fungal approach, right? And they also, it wasn't just that. They also knew how and when to plant based on the moon cycle. And there's some people in the country, they're like, oh, that's nonsense. It's like, okay, why is the Farmer's Almanac still tell you when the new moon and full moon and all stuff is going to be right? Because a lot of farmers understand that there's a tidal force between the Moon and Earth, and if you plant at the right time, you'll grab the tidal force in the right direction. If you plant the wrong time, you're going to stunt the growth of your plants. So you know, the Mayans and the Incans knew this interest. I mean, they knew it so well that they knew exactly when to plant to the day, almost. That

is so cool. I just love that, that history and that study of ancient people,

and I got my hands on the soil that no one has touched it for 500 years in this region, because they were, they were moved away by the Spaniards when they came in there, right? But the soil, to this day, after we looked at it, is still the most fertile soil on the planet. Wow, 500 years later. So it's the power of once you get this process into place in the soil, it's it done. It's good, right? And so we thought, okay, we can't. Dig this soil up and try to sell it to the Americans, right? So, how can we make this in a commercially responsible way? And that's kind of how we founded the that was how we found a green row. She's

trying to mimic that terra preta, the black earth, exactly.

And I finally, after much tinkering, found a way to do it. And so then we started producing it, we got it registered, you know, no, and then, you know, founded the company. And that's how the tele Ringer was, you know, founded, basically.

That's a wild story, man. I love how it ties into your education. And, you know, I've heard a lot. I'd love your, your take on this. I've heard a lot about this kind of understanding of biochar and microbiology and inoculation, and even even this theory that some of the Amazonian rainforest itself could be a permaculture forest. Is that something that you've come across in your studies, and do you lend credence to that or

not? Yeah, yeah. I mean certain portions of the Amazonian rainforest, it's just, it's too perfect how certain, like beneficial plants are laced and layered in there. So the theory, and this is still an early theory, archeologically speaking, is like that cultures over the last 2500 years have beneficially planted things to make the forest more abundant for them and more important, you know, so wild, yeah, just

accumulating over generation after generation after generation. And that's what possibly created. What we know is the Amazon,

yeah, and I mean, and here's, here's why. Because, if you really went back 1000 years ago, the Amazon didn't look the same as it does today. There were hundreds of cities in the Amazon that were now just discovering through Lidar and radar. So, so what happened was, here's the story. So basically, it was a Spaniard, right, who went up, he was, he was going up the Amazon, right, basically him and about, you know, four other sailors had gotten off their ship and then got on a smart boat to try to traverse the Amazon from side to side. And they run a river boat. And when they were going through it, they were seeing these beautiful, gleaming cities with rich and robust peoples and trade and commerce and very wealthy people, whoa. And, I mean, he was talking millions of people, okay? And then when people, he wrote a book about it, and then when people tried to go back 50 years later, there was nothing. I mean, you know, maybe it was maybe 75 years later, but there was nothing. It was just forced a jungle right? And so what happened was, is that they gave the peoples they encountered. They give them like smallpox or malaria or something, and it killed them all. It was like a 90 a 90% kill rate. So the jungles were that strong that within 50 to 75 years, they swallowed up the cities. Wow.

So it was more inhabited before the viruses that killed so many Americans, Native Americans in both north and south, Central

and South America were probably some of the most advanced places on Earth, right?

Yeah, at that time, 100% with their understanding of archeology and architecture, yeah, I just never put it together that they were integrated into the Amazon, and then they come back later, and it's like, Where did everybody go? Well, it was the virus or viruses? Yeah, that's really wild. Man, yeah, super wild.

Some of the cities that they're finding right now, and, I mean, it's not mainstream news right now, but they're epic. I mean, they're just gorgeous, like reliefs and monoliths and temples and pyramids, and I mean courtyards and canals. And I mean, it's incredible what they have the Amazon

and they were inoculating biochar. They were taking this. They were taking this, this charcoal like substance, and understanding that it holds some sort of inoculation property. That's absolutely insane. Yeah, I would like to talk about that. Talk about biochar specifically because I understand its benefits. I understand that it's important as part of a soil mix. But there are questions that I have. Maybe we can start from the beginning. How do you explain what biochar is? When people ask, yeah, and this idea of, like, creating it through, you know, pyrolysis and that sort of thing, yeah,

I mean, so the difference between like biochar and charcoal is pretty much biochar is a you're slowly the process is pyrolysis, but you're slowly charring, like wood chips or from hardwood generally, is what the best to do is with but slowly Over time, in like an oxygen deprived environment where it's slowly charring over, you know, a longer period of time, so that you're getting a good carbonization of the wood. It's almost like you're turning those wood chunks into perfect versions of carbon of themselves. And then what they would do is. They would usually cool it or quench it with purified spring water to rinse the ash and impurities out. Because people always ask me, What's the difference of just taking my my fire, you know, ash, and throwing in the garden? That's a horrible problem that people do all the time. And it's like, well, you know, when you look at a forest fire, you don't see robust accelerated growth until after the first few rains have happened, right? Because the rains wash away the ash and the chemical constituent components that would be present with a fire, right, the caustic chemicals. So when you have just the presence of the pure carbon left over, that's when you start seeing robust growth and accelerated performance from not only just the flora, but the fauna too.

Oh, I never put that together. So you, you do not recommend adding fire pit ash or fire ash into your soil mixes,

no, no, not at all. You got to remove the fly ash. Like, that's, that's a huge like, there, there are times when adding that to your soil could be beneficial if you're trying to do, like, a pH adjustment, or there's something that you're trying to specifically do, right? But in general, you just want the biochar carbon. So that's where people make a huge amount of mistakes when it comes to biochar is they just think that it's all the same. It's not the same, right? Because, I mean, charcoal is made through like intense heat and pressure, right? And there's also, they don't necessarily get rid of all the chemical constituent components from an incendiary process, so fear on and other types of chemicals that could be present in there. That's why they always say when you're going to cook with charcoal, you have to wait until it starts to get what white right? Because they have to burn off all the there's basically, like, what's called wood gas. And wood gas is something that comes out of wood as you're like, burning it. And it can be incendiary, like it can it can provide fuel for the fire. Does that make sense, right? So when people the different Yeah, so that's why charcoal can catch fire so well and burn for so long, whereas if you tried to do the same thing with pure biochar, it wouldn't have the same effect, wow,

because it was cooked slow and low and in a low specifically in a low oxygen environment, low oxygen

environment, and it's also cooking out the tannins and sugars from the wood as well. Wow. And then from there, it's making sure that you're rinsing it with spring water, because there's a lot of heavy metals that come out of wood burning, and we know from our industry that we're trying to remove heavy metals right. And so if you do biochar correctly, biochar can then be an accumulator for heavy metals, which is good because it'll pull the heavy metals from the surrounding soil or from any nutrients you're using, and hold them right, and

then you won't end up accumulating them in the plant, where you may end up, you know, smoking it for flower. You don't want the bioaccumulator to grab those heavy metals. So biochar acts as kind of a binder in the soil.

Yeah, because so basically, with with biochar, you're trying to get an inner, an inner lattice structure of carbon, right? So the carbon, on a molecular level, will start interlacing, interlacing itself, so that there's nooks and crannies in a way, right? And those same nooks and crannies have become the homes of microbes, and those microbes will embed themselves in there because they're so small, and then they will use that as a base of living. And that's how the inoculation and fermentation process can start with biochar. How

much biochar do you recommend as far as like a soil constituent in a mix?

That's very important.

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That's very important. So you know, a lot of people will disagree with me, but I know that. I mean, I've lived it and breathed it for 15 years. You should not add too much biochar to your soil because of this reason because biochar also is an accumulator. It will also absorb nitrogen like crazy if you don't properly activate it. So I get guys out there going, Yeah, biochar, I'm going to add 20% to my soil by volume. No, don't ever do that. That's not good. When you look at really good, really good biochar soils, and maybe tear up prey to style soils. I mean, I think 5% you know, would be the max, because you have a carbon to nitrogen ratio that you have to keep and, you know, the CDN ratio is really important for a high performance soil. 5% right in that sweet spot, yeah. So what Green Grow does is we do it even more concentrated. So like when we're making our product, we're heavily concentrating all the ingredients together, right? And we're fermenting and fermenting and concentrating, right? So what we do is we only do five pounds per cubic yard, and that, for us is the sweet spot, scientifically, because it allows you to have the right carbon to nitrogen ratio in the soil, so that it helps promote massive amounts of beneficial microbes and fungal development. And you're not going to sequester nitrogen, and you're going to have a more robust living soil.

You can find green grows biochar at the Green grow.com that's the green G, R, o.com, and Mark even made a promo code grow cast 10 for 10% off your purchase. So your earth shine is your bio char, and it looks like you have humic acid blended in there as well. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to kind of double passivation with the heavy metals. Yeah.

So I mean, what we did with our bio chart, we wanted to completely differentiate and disassociate from biochar as a component. What we're making is Amazonian style terra preta. So when people you know come out to me and they say, well, what's the difference between your biochar and other biochar? Ours isn't biochar anymore. It'd be like saying, What's the difference between a pile of metal and a car? You're like, well, metal makes up the car, but the car is not metal in of itself, right? So what we're doing is we're following what we saw, the techniques that they were likely doing, right, where we're mixing in regenerative ingredients. And like, for us, you know, I'm OCD about things, so like, you know, my business partner makes all of our worm castings, and the worm castings are made from organic vegetable waste. In my mind, it's like, okay, that's probably what the natives were doing down there. They were feeding their worms, or whatever, the leftover scraps from their piles, and then that was being mixed with the biochar and amended soil. So what we did, we discovered we looked at the soil down there. We saw it's very mineral dense, because there was, like, there was erosion from, like, natural rock structures in the soil. So there's mineral dense soil, there was a high humus content, humus, right? So the humic acid, we're like, okay, let's that's going to help us. And then biochar dense, obviously, in some ways, and then micro bleed dense. So we just took those, all those ingredients together and came up with a formula to help emulate terra preta in a concentrated form, right? So cool. I think that's the thing that customers and people that are gardeners have to understand, is that, like, Sure, you can go online to Amazon and buy, you know, a big two cubic foot bag of biochar for 40 bucks or whatever, but you're buying a tool and a tool belt, right? You need to have the whole tool belt full of tools to actually have that be useful to you, right?

And not all bio char is created equal to begin with. So that's, that's a really good point you got. You got to grab the good stuff so that Earth shine is your guys' biochar. And more. Again, the Green grow.com and if you do decide to try out Mark's products, code grow, cast 10 for 10% off your order. I want to talk about that microbial inoculation, and then I also want to make time for green aminos. And there's a lot I want to discuss, but, yeah, but let's go here, because I heard you mention it before. You were talking about, you know, these native populations and inoculating with biology, and you specifically brought up fungal dominant biology. Yeah, I feel like, when we I take a look at a lot of indoor soil growers, or just growers in general, who are using microbiology, there's a lot of focus on beneficial bacteria. How do you recommend we look at the bacterial and fungal balance when it comes to cannabis? And follow up question, how do we get that fungal life to really thrive in our garden?

Yeah. I mean, you know, we want to get fungal balance early on. You know, that's the goal. So having a strong fungal Association early on, and then furthermore, then focusing on bacterial incorporation once the plants already established. That's the way I typically do things. If I'm setting up a new soil. New garden, because, you know, mycorrhizal fungi, for example. Like it takes mycorrhizal fungi that you know for, let's say endo mycorrhizal fungi. It takes them about, you know, four weeks or so to get set up. It doesn't happen overnight. So, you know, you want to transplant with mycorrhizae. Like, anytime you have access to the root zone, you want to the root zone, you want to use mycorrhiza, right? Because you want to continually grow that fungal network down below. Now, that's one form right of mycorrhizae, one form of fungal network, right? So there's also mycelium, various different types of mycelium, decomposer, mycelium, and, you know, mycelial networks in general, that you know, help with transportation of nutrients and in between plants and soil substrates. I mean, there's a lot to go there's a lot to get into there on that one by itself. But I always say, Earth shine has obviously mycelium. And then there's also, you know, mycorrhizal supplements that you could buy, granular mycorrhiza and things like that that you don't want to use too. So I always say, start with mixing their shining your soil, and then from there, transplant with mycorrhiza. Endo, mycorrhiza is what you want to be using for gardening. Ecto, mycorrhiza is more for tree shrubs, conifers, things like that. And that's going to be a good way to start your basis for fungal, you know, dominance in the soil. And then, of course, you can brew teas with bacteria and mycelium, you cannot really brew teas with mycorrhiza. So I hear this all the time. People are like, Well, I used your mycorrhizae my teas. Okay, cool. You are getting the mycorrhizae as well by doing a tea, but you're not replicating the mycorrhizae to tea, right?

Why is that as opposed to other, you know, microbes that we can brew out in teas? Mycorrhiza needs some sort of home, some sort of home base to establish mycorrhiza

needs the presence of the root of a plant to really activate and set out the and so what mycorrhiza does, right? You take the spore of a mycorrhiza, right? That's like, consider that the egg that'll come in contact with a root, it'll sense the presence of the root phytochemicals. And then it will, in the presence of moisture, it will put out a hyphal network. A hyphal network is kind of just imagine, like really thin spider, like strands of its own root system. And then you'll set it'll send a vesicle into the root stock of the plant, kind of like a needle going to the vein. And it'll have a biochemical language between the plant and the mycorrhizal fungi, where it'll say, Hey, I'm ready to work. What do you need from me? And the mic, and the plant will say, Hey, I will trade you a little bit of sugar if you will get me some phosphorus or some water or protect me against this or that, right? So it's not going to do that when you're brewing in a tea. And a lot of companies, even including Greenville, will say, Yeah, add it to your tea. But we know it's not, that's not the component, right? That's getting going your teas. What's getting going in your teas is anything that can, that can regenerate in the presence of, you know, oxygen, water and sugar, right? And that's usually beneficial bacteria, and also certain types of beneficial fungi that don't require anything other than itself to replicate, right,

right? That makes sense. Yeah, the necessary relationship with the with the root zone, it's still going to get into your soil, and to get that in early is another thing you're saying. You know, I know mycorrhizal fungi takes, like you said, a few weeks to even get going, and then, you know, even months later, still establishing. So I like the idea of just focusing on bacteria a little bit later in the growth cycle. That that I do, I think it's a great piece of advice. And, yeah, man, I'm loving it. I'm loving the green aminos. I'm loving the earth shine. I'm gonna have to try this earth shine next. But, yeah, you guys are killing it. No,

the green and the green. The green aminos is literally one of my favorite products. I mean, it's literally a Swiss army knife for everything greenro does. It's, it's just incredible. So look at the green aminos as like a protein shake for your plants, right? The more I dive into alternative agricultural techniques in my life path, the more I discovered that plants need almost the exact same thing that humans need, and the more that large ag companies divert from this, the more you're seeing less healthy fruits and vegetables, the soils are being depleted. You're seeing, you know, very low mineralization in the population of humans right now, because the plants and vegetables have 50% less mineralization than they did 50 years ago. So I'm looking at it like this, okay, if you are a human, you're going to need to have your your macronutrients. You need to have your food. You know that gets you through the day, right? But if you're a guy that likes to work out, you need food, but you also need your proteins, amino acids and full mineral spectrum, right? So that's where green growth theorized that, okay, we need to be feeding soluble protein and amino acid complexes with beneficial bacteria to the plant. Yeah, and that's where kind of the key went into a lock for me, because the moment I invented green aminos, I said, Okay, we need a diversity of protein. So whey protein, okay, seaweed protein, and soy protein is what's in there. And then we also have a little bit humic acid and some red sea algae from Indonesia, which no one else has either. So what I'm trying to do is, okay, there's 102 minerals that our bodies and plants can absorb, right? That are beneficial for every type of function in our body. Almost everyone is, at least, in America, is about 40 to 50% deficient in those minerals. So if you start in proving the concentration of those minerals in every cell wall of the plant and the human almost all diseases start to vanish. So you're basically giving an immune system boost, plus, you know, a muscle boost to the plant, and then you feed it the normal foods that it needs to digest. That's

wild man. It literally is a protein shake for your plant, soy protein, 10% calcium. Good lord, I see a lot of people really leaning into this. You know, I speak to people who make nutrient lines and soils and all of this, and they're all saying, calcium, calcium, calcium. Calcium is a macronutrient. I had no idea that green aminos was 10% calcium. That's fucking wild, yeah.

And it's like, diverse calcium, you know, super fine powder calcium that dissolves in water. So, I mean, people just don't have products like this in the market currently, because they're just looking at it. I feel like, when I go on a health binge for like, six or seven or eight months, and it then opens me up to new products for green room, like, Oh, wait. Okay. So I realized, you know, so I've been realizing there's all these little compounds and components that are like helping to improve people and solve illness and disease. And then I go, Hmm, what about that in the plant world? Okay, so look at gut biome. How important it is to have strong gut biome and healthy gut biome, which means beneficial microbes living in your guts, right? And what are the roots of a plant?

The rhizosphere is, is its microbiome? It's so true, exactly.

So I'm always like, okay, so people are not using enough microbes, or they're using salt based fertilizers that fry it, you know,

salty fried foods. Man frying our gut bacteria. It's the same microbes in the in the gut, yes, it's literally lactobacillus. Yep.

And so people forget. What do microbes do? They release enzymes. What those enzymes do? They help you digest? What? What are the back the microbes on the roots do? They're bacillus. They release enzymes. What do they do? They keep the roots clean so they can absorb more nutrients. They help digest the nutrients more. For the plants, they can take them up easier. I mean, there's, it's all the same. So

true. I think I have root rot in my gut. I gotta improve my diet, because I gotta tell you, I got root rot going on. Well,

yeah, and, I mean, and you can, you can heal that very quickly by number one, getting all the minerals you need in, like a in a heavy supplement, right? Like Irish Sea Moss, or, you know, burdock root and those things that have 102 minerals in it. And then from there, you eat some kimchi and some, like, sauerkraut, boom. You buy them six in a week, you know?

Yeah, I love that fermented food. And you know, what you need is a good flush. Just drink a ton of water. That always solves my worst health problems is just old school grower trick of the heavy flush.

Oh no. I mean, and, you know, we know, and I don't know if your listeners know, but it's called fasting, right? So we do the same thing to plants, right? When the plants were needing to, kind of like, clear the plants of excess waste and stuff. It's called flushing. But in our life, we call it fasting. When you fast and just drink purified spring water for three days. After the first 24 hours, you start going through a top OG, basically, right? And that top 2g is, is a way of saying that all of your bad proteins and gunk in your body gets burned up while you're fasting, and so that it cleans and clears out the cell walls, right? All that cellular waste, 100% cellular waste, and there's that, and that's why some people like to, like to do that for the last seven days. For the plant is like, give it a break from feeding and worrying about that. Let it clean and clear up its cell walls, and then you harvest. If

only we gave half as much attention to our own deficiencies as the plants deficiency. I know I like, I like the message, man. And there's something to learn from both sides. There really is like you're saying, Yeah,

and if customers just grabbed Earth shine and green aminos and did whatever else they wanted, they'd be so far ahead. I'm not even telling them. I mean, yeah, buy my other products if you want that's great. But just think about what we want the plants to do, be as healthy and as thriving as possible, you know, just like we want our children to be. So I tell people, it's really simple. Green aminos is the most simple thing in the world. Just use it whenever you want a teaspoon per gallon of water, and you can full your spray with it if the plants having trouble feeding that week. Or you can root drench it. It. The thing is, too that people understand, is it, you can create clones and root systems with this product, right? There's 10% calcium, plus everything else in there. So I have guys soaking their grow cubes when they make cuttings that day. So can

I ask you a question about incorporating Earth shine, but also biochar specifically? So let's say that I've got a living soil bed, and I really don't want to till it, and I want to incorporate some biochar, and there's not biochar in it. Is that going to require a tilling? Or do you recommend maybe sub dressing? What do you what do you think about applying biochar to a bed?

No, absolutely. That's that's the beauty of Earth shine versus regular biochar, is you can top dress it, and you're going to get the benefits that you're looking for, you're gonna get, you know, the pure carbon is loose, will start transporting down to lower parts of the the soil bed. You will also get the like, if you're doing a straw bed, right, like you have straw on the top, if you top dress, the earth shine over the straw. The Earth shine will start breaking down the straw into humus in the matter of two weeks or three weeks. Oh, yeah, that's beautiful. And then there's also, I don't know if I coined the term. Maybe I just heard somebody say it, but low till, low till is what I do, okay, is where I love. I've not heard that. I love that, yeah. So, I mean, I just, I just till the top one and a half inches. So, like, it's more of just a scratch in. So what I'm doing is, is that I'm taking, like Pride Lands, veg food and Earth shine, and I'm doing like a perfect dusting over all the soil surface, and then I'm gently scratching it in. And that's low till, because you're incorporating the top inch or two. So it's like a sponge filter, okay? And then every time you water, that sponge filter, expands contracts, expands contracts, and that's going to push it down like a muscle down through the soil bed. Yeah?

And then you're not breaking up those fungal networks. So great advice the low till going low till indoors. Yeah. Let's get a little more general on that note. What do you see, as far as people, who are, you know, organic growers, maybe they're indoor, quote, living soil growers, and they're using your products or not. What are some things that you would recommend to these people? What are some common mistakes that you see people making in their organic grows?

Yeah, I mean throwing everything in the kitchen sink at it. I mean, that's true. Over incorporating redundant ingredients is the most common, oh, I have a lot of people. They're like, Yeah, you know, I use your pridelands Veg, and I've used your earth shine and green and aminos, and I use this person's humic phobic and I use this person's fish and this person's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, but you realize that Pride Lands veg has catfish meal and fish bone meal and humic and this and that, and then ershine has humic and, you know, right? And then they're like, Yeah, but I still like using their products. I'm like, okay, but are you getting a net benefit, or are you throwing money away? You know, because, and I always tell people, it doesn't mean you have to use my product, but if you really like a product, why add two or three or four other products that have redundant ingredients in it? So I find that to be the most common. Well, there's many other common things also with with organic gardening, which is the need to always be touching the plant or messing with the soil, right? That is so true. Yeah, they come from a maybe a synthetic or a bottle nutrient world, where they're just used to always finicking with something, and you have just in the pH and blah, blah, blah. It's like, Look, if you're in a living soil bed, it will auto adjust the pH to what it needs to be. The microbes will do it for you. And also it's going to feed the plant the way it needs to, right? So it's not like, you say, Oh, I top dressed on a Monday. That was uh oh. That was May 7, eight. So I have to top dress at 12pm on May 15. It's not the way it works. You know, like that's how it works with bottle nutrients, because it's like a needle going to the vein and the plants relying on it. But, like, organics is so much more forgiving, right? And really, what I tell people is that you've already employed an army of gardeners to help you blow the soil.

Yeah, it's way more hands off. You know, I love my bottled growers, but they have this habit, and it's because the more you do in like a cocoa grow, the bigger your plants get. Like you do want to water again, like you're never over watering. You do want to raise the light. You do want to get in there. It's like, the more you do, the more you get from a synthetic grow, from a bottled grow, and then you switch to living soil, and you're way better off just fucking walking away, leaving that tent closed, like we were saying on a recent episode, not even fucking with it. Now, I break my own rules. I'm always in there, kind of touching the plant and stuff, but it's so not optimal. It's better to just leave it alone. Yeah,

I mean, I just think that, you know, people, that's where people get call me. They're like, Oh, I over watered my plants. Marker, hey, I burned my plants. Like, how did you burn your plants with my organics? They're like, Oh, well, you know, I just thought it needed a little something. So I hit it with, like, this water that had some cow mag and some this, that, and the other in it. And I'm like, Why did you do that?

So just trying to. It could grow bigger. Or,

like, I mean, I'm like, and like, how did the plant look before? They're like, Oh, man, it was deep, dark, blue, green. The plant was praying. And like, okay, so why did you touch anything? It's

the grower mentality, bro. It's just how it goes. It's so true. The

other thing that I come across all the time that's an issue is that people who, again, came from bottle nutrients, will mix a reservoir, or, like a batch tank of like maybe a compost tea, and they'll store it and try to use it a week to 10 days later. And I'm like, no ruin bad. No, don't do that. So if you're going to make a compost tea for your nutrient regimen, you need to use it within 72 hours, because, you know, you'll start having pathogenic bacteria start showing up within 48 if you know, sometimes. So, I mean, you really need to use it quickly so that you're not, you know, storing pathogenic bacteria. So,

yeah, that's a really good point. You know, it is one of the the benefits of those synthetic chemicals is the shelf life. And the magic of microbes happens instantly. You need to mix that brew and then apply it. There is no replication for that. That's why it's so powerful and potent. You really can't just like, put it on the shelf. There are certain ways that people stabilize certain microbes, obviously, but like that wide spectrum compost tea, use it fresh, because nothing compares. You know, they haven't found a way. And

just so the listeners understand, when you stop aerating that and you stop having a food source for those microbes, you start getting death and decay. Once death and decay happens, you start getting anaerobic microbes in a hypoxic environment, right? And so the anaerobic microbes aren't all bad by any means, but their job is to come in like a wrecking crew and absorb and digest all the organic matter. So, you know, just food for thought for everyone. I

love it. Mark. This was a great exploration. I really appreciate the talk about biochar, the history side, of course, very special and near and dear to my heart. Yeah. So Yeah. We just, we appreciate it, man. Before we wrap it up, though, anything you can tease for us, any products that are going to be coming out that you might want to hint at, or, you know, the future of Green Grow,

yeah. I mean, we're obviously delving into, like, Home and Garden markets now across the country, for you know, like lawn and garden centers, things like that, because we feel like that's an underserved market, especially when it comes to organics. I mean, what they consider organic fertilizers and soils in that market makes me want to cry because it's just terrible. So my mission for the next five years is going to be really changing the conversation for backyard and organic gardeners on what quality organics looks like and what can produce in terms of their final finished product. I

love it, man, into the Garden Market where maybe we can bring over some of our standards, right where, when we take a look at the traditional gardening market, there is a lot of shit that, honestly, cannabis growers would not put up with at least at this juncture. So I love that mission.

Yeah, so that's that. And then, you know, you see, we're continuing to, you know, try to do our work for the world food crisis. We're kind of a big part of that international partnerships in Africa. So we donate. Green Road donates a certain percentage of the net income the company every year to helping establish positive agricultural practices in poor African villages in like VR Congo, West Africa. So well, building, you know, regenerative agriculture, techniques, things like that.

Jeez, that's really cool. Man. I love to hear that. Yeah. Well, Godspeed Mark, I really appreciate you again. The Green grow.com that's gro for grow and code grow cast 10 for 10% off again. Appreciate your time. Really great episode, Mark, and we'll have to have you back on in the future. Perfect. Thanks so much. Thank you, Mark. And thank you listeners. Make sure to stay tuned. We have all sorts of episodes coming your way, so don't touch that dial. That is all for today, though. This is Mark from the Green Grow 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, and thank you to Mark from Green Grow. We'll certainly have him back on in the future before we wrap it up, though. Shout out to the order of cultivation. That's right. Our community of growers, we are here to get new people growing, to lift people up and to have a great time while growing this cannabis plant amongst the community. Check out growcast podcast.com/membership. You can try seven days free in the order of cultivation. You can find gromies in your area. Join our regional chapters, hundreds of hours of bonus content waiting for you there. Grow cast TV, our web video show, the best show in cannabis, if I do say so myself, plus discounts, giveaways, member discord and more. Check it out. Grow cast podcast.com/membership, brings you right there. Seven days free, you will not regret it. I truly am proud to have created what I think is the great. Community in cannabis. So come and check us out. Join your new family. Grow, cast podcast.com/membership, the order of cultivation awaits, and of course, members of the Order getting 25% off our classes, such as our Pesta Palooza class this weekend in New York City. Grow, cast podcast.com/classes, come and see us, everybody. All right, that's it. Thank you so much, everybody. I appreciate each and every one of you. We will see you soon to next class or meet up, or I'll just see you on the next podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't touch that. Dial bye, bye, everybody. You

they're just used to always finicking with something and have Justin the pH and blah, blah, blah.