🐘Battling Elephants and Hippos, the State of the Cannabis Genepool, and IPM Talk, with Steve Raisner

2:34AM Jan 28, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Keywords:

cannabis genepool

IPM talk

pest control

beneficial insects

bio controls

microbe collection

IPMO

natural farming

aquaponics

hemp shop

lettuce production

beneficial insects

pest pressure

microbial solutions

plant defense

Greetings growers from around the world. Jordan River here back at you with more grow cast delivered at the perfect pH today we have Steve raisner back on the line. Potent pons is here to talk about his recent adventures and travels. We talk about the release of the philos seed line. For those of you who've been listening to the show for a long time, it is a very interesting callback. Steve discusses a little bit of that with us before moving into IPM and controlling pests, as well as some of his incredible travels around the world consulting for all sorts of different cultivators. It's a really strong episode. I know you're gonna love it before we jump in, though. Shout out 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, acinfinity.com. All right, let's get into it with Steve. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello, podcast listeners, you are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today before we get started. As always, I urge you to share this show. Turn a grower on to grow cast, or turn a smoker onto growing. It's the best thing you can do to help us on our mission of overgrow. Make sure you're subscribed wherever you're listening to this. We're on Spotify. We're at growcast podcast.com we're everywhere. Hit, follow, hit, subscribe and check out growcast podcast.com. For all the stuff, membership, seeds, classes, it's all there. Special. Thank you to the members for making this show possible. All right, everyone, we are back again with aquaponics expert, IPM expert, microbe expert, and my good friend, potent ponics is here. What's going on? Steve, how are you doing?

Hey, man, thanks for having me. It's been a minute. It's always fun to be on your show. Yeah, welcome

back to grow cast, man, let's catch up with you know what's been going on? What you've been up to since we last spoke? I know you've been traveling consulting. You got a new aquaponics production thing going on with vegetables. Talk to me about what you've been doing,

yeah, working on some projects in Texas for a bit. It was big facility down there. I was doing some consulting on did some work for a group in Minnesota that was really fun, working with them, and, yeah, just kind of doing a bit of consulting here and there at the moment, and then working on trying to get our shop open, which seems like a never ending bureaucracy bullshit in Tennessee, but I think we're, we're just about there, so We'll have that up and running here before too long, with our nice, little hemp shop been working on that, and then have a little converting, and currently working on converting an old trout farm into a food production space. We'll be doing three to 4000 heads of lettuce on that. So that'll be another great way to kind of get stuff up and running and have a little cool little project to work on too, and we'll sell those shop here once we get open in the next few weeks. But, you know, going through all the inspections and SOPs and all that fun stuff for a place that's doing production in the back and in foods, food in the front is a little bit trickier than just doing a dispo or just doing a, you know, a cafe on its own. So take a little bit longer. That's

cool, though. Man, that is rewarding. I'm sure it's a pain in the ass to get it up and running, but yeah, are you doing that out of like, like a pond on the property, or something like that, or do you have fish that you're raising? How does that

work? So there's a neighbor that does raises a bunch of different types of local fish for pond stocking, and they were no longer doing trout. He wanted to convert that into something else. So we talked about it, and we're converting over. It's a long raceway. It's like 130 foot raceways that are concrete, and they're about seven feet deep. So we'll convert those into the raceways for the lettuce, and then we'll have the fish up on the side in a separate side tank with the with the filtration system, so we can mineralize all that waste and grow the vegetables with that. And then, you know, we have the hemp farm, which is much closer to where I live, which isn't that far that we're also doing just some soil production of some THCA. And CBD and that kind of stuff. Neat,

man, neat. I am excited to see how you update us on all of that. Of course, your work with copyleft cultivars and the natural farming bot. People were, were stoked on that. Any new updates on that front with the AI natural farming chat bot? Yeah,

we just recently picked up another backer, so that's going to help us quite a bit. Once we get all the paperwork finished with them, it'll allow us a nice influx of cash so we can really improve the model quite a bit. That's that's helping on all fronts, really. And then we have been working on models for ones you can run locally on your phone, so like you could be running it off grid, you can basically download the app to your phone and then run it. It might not have access to the full extent of its knowledge, but it would have access to most of the basic gardening stuff, that one on one stuff, and most of your basic stuff. But if you need to do calculations and crazy stuff. You might still need to connect to the internet, but you know, for most purposes, you'll be able to run it locally in the future. Version that we're working on right now, from that working on some photo recognition stuff and working on just improving the overall model, we're doing a lot of training now on data sets that you know, having to build new data sets really vastly improved the I completely overhauled the IPM aspects of it since we've last spoken, and that's been completely updated, along with benefit, has beneficial insect release rates. So if you give it the square foot of canopy, and it goes all the way up to however big you want, but it knows everything from, you know, 100 square feet, or even a square foot, all the way up to 10 acres. And then it can do the math from that, based on those numbers to, you know, give you the answer on that, and it'll give you a rough cost too, right? So it's not going to be like the exact price, but it would be like, it'll be approximately this much money to do this. And this is the thought, you know how many 1000s per you know you're going to need for your release rate, for your facility, and that's kind of so on and so forth. So it really helps, kind of hold your hand through that. And then also really overhaul the bio controls, which I'm still updating, but it has, in my opinion, a way more extensive list of legal bio controls than anything else that I've seen anywhere else posted online. And the other cool thing that we did since the last time we spoke is it now is fully aquaponics or wetland compliant. So if you want to exclude any plants used in the formulations like we showed in the previous episode that might kill or harm fish. It knows over 800 species of plants now which that list took quite a while for me to compile, but to my knowledge, is the largest list any ever put together on, you know, stuff that kills fish in terms of plants and mushrooms. So it makes sure that it costs, you know, says, hey, if this is a concern. Be mindful that this plant might not you might want to swap this plant out, and then it also will take into account genus. So if there's a plant that's in the same genus that it recommends based on nutrition, that has a similar plant in that same genus that might kill fish, it'll say warning other plants in this genus are known to kill fish. So we're trying to make it more environmentally friendly, or as environmentally friendly as possible, but it also allows you to now use it for aquaponics, which is kind of a cool aspect of it. So that is very, kind of a neat utility for it, you know, that I haven't seen in any other type of app that does this kind of stuff?

Yeah, I remember when you were telling me about that, when you were compiling that list. It's cool to see that that that was already implemented since our last episode. And I was thinking about that last episode, you know, because of copyleft's mission creating this new open source patent, basically to fight back against patenting genetics. I was recently reminded of you guys and so much more. I do want to say just really quickly, we have an awesome episode planned for you guys all about kind of what Steve was just talking about a second ago, which is IPM, IPM, and microbes and bio controls and all of that good stuff. But before we get into that, I do want to talk about this separate subject. Like I said, reminded of your last episode, Steve, do you know I just got an I just got an email from philos the other week asking if they could come on my show and talk about their new line of seeds that just dropped. That's a real thing that happened, Steve. And before I get your reaction, let me just say for the listeners, because it's been years, man, it's been years since philos was on this show, and also we had a guy named sun grown mids come on the show and talk about the what is essentially clearly nefarious work that they were doing, right? Philos is a company that was coming out. They were claiming that they wanted to do this data play where they were mapping the cannabis genome so we can understand more about it. They said, of course, we. Don't ever sell genetics, because that would be a massive conflict of interest. This data that we're collecting would be a huge advantage in the market. And then it turns out some internet sleuths, Steve included, you know, posted some video of the same guy overseas talking to investors, talking about how, yeah, we're gonna enter the genetics market, and we're gonna have this huge advantage, because we know all this stuff, and we've done the data play, and turns out they didn't do a very good job mapping it, and so there were errors to begin with. People found out about it, they got exposed. They kind of slinked away from the cannabis industry and just disappeared for a few years. Now, I'm getting emails saying, Hey, we just literally, like, we just dropped a seed line. Can we come on your show and promote it? Clearly, this person is not the same person that was working for them years ago, because they would know that I did a whole expose on that company. Again, not something we do Steve here at grow cast, but the one thing that we do fight against are the actors that could potentially hurt our home grow rights, and that includes anybody who lobbies against home grow rights, including cannabis companies lobbying against home grow rights, and also the people who try to restrict genetics based on patents, based on legislation. We don't have a lot of enemies here at growcast, right, but if you fall in those two categories, we have a problem, because our mission is overgrow, right? So it was funny. You know, copyleft really doing good work out there, quite the opposite of what philos was trying to do. But I would like to get your reaction, Steve, they just dropped a new seed line. They want to come on grow cast. We were talking about getting them on and getting you on for a little interview or something. What do you think of that?

I mean, I think, I think Sun grow meds would probably be the best person or, or some of the ex members of Open, open cannabis project would be, oh,

right, because

they like piggyback off of that, yeah. Well, so Okay, so for those of you that that don't know the story, so philos originally was a company that was like, hey, we'll genetically sequence your cannabis and blah blah, blah, blah, will tell you if it has these traits, and you know, if the strain is really what it is, and all this other stuff. And then they had a spin off, like subsidiary called Open cannabis project, which was DNA sequencing company. And they were supposed to be just this open source registration of genetics. You could send it in and then register it open source, and it would like, protect your cultivar, right, and put it into the public domain? Well, what they were doing is one, they were illegally against their own contract, saving a lot of the seeds in an edX that they were being sent and then using them in their tissue culture lab, which they had under a different company's registration name. And we're basically growing stuff and tissue culturing stuff that they thought would be good for their breeding project so they could make cultivars in the back end. Well, as soon as so they they lied to investors, you know, an SEC violation. They lied to the community in order to get access to genetics, which is just scummy as shit. But you know, they committed felonies when they lied to investors and misled the public and investors and what their use of the funds was for. So somebody, I forget who it was. It wasn't Trevor who originally went there. It was another person. They were on one of my episodes of my show went on and recorded, somehow got access to their their investor briefing behind closed doors, when on the one when they announced that they were going to start doing tissue culture and breeding with the genetics that they had gotten from their program, so they went and filmed the whole thing, and that got released. I forget when it was, it was in five years ago. I'm looking at the episode. I

said a few years ago. God, I'm old, Steve. We're getting old now. I

know so five years ago he they went and that dropped, and I was actually dragonfly with medicines house the morning that that happened, and I was, I was on the phone with them, when, when the CEO of open cannabis project found out, and she just started crying, and then she did the only moral thing, and shot hats off to fucking Beth. She immediately dissolved the entire entity, because she was the CEO, wow, and basically nuked the whole thing so that, you know, they couldn't use it anymore for their own bullshit. So that was, I guess, the good thing of it was that, you know, that that part was able to be, you know, submarines, but it was just so scummy that they lied to all these breeders, all the community, you know, abused everybody and then stole their genetics. I mean, a lot of they were, ask anybody that worked at open cannabis project or or over at philos, like, it's not a big secret the seeds were, you know, occasionally being shared that were being nailed in and. Uh, you know, it's just shitty that that happened. Yeah, it's

just clearly, like, you said it was deceptive practices. Like, there's nothing wrong with any of those things in a vacuum, but if you're lying about your intentions, and then you're trying to gain a competitive advantage with things like, especially with things like genetic assisted breeding, right? That's literally like, was, was the whole game plan from the beginning. It's funny, Steve, because looking at it now, it seems like it's kind of backfired, right? Like this industry moves so fast, bro. And if you think you're gonna step in the seed game now and take over like you, better have a good, solid strategy. So now they drop this line. You and I were kind of poking fun at what they have available. It doesn't look, you know, like this spectacular new species or anything like that. And here they are sending out emails like every other breeder, trying to get onto a podcast to talk about their genetics. I don't think that it did them any favors, is what I'm saying, Steve. And I don't think that they're, they're going to be able to make a dent in this market at all. If I had to predict, I don't think they're going to be in the right round for much longer. In the seed game,

their CEO had to literally go into hiding for multiple years because there was, like, death threats and a bounty on the guys I know at least. I heard of at least two bounties on his fucking head, of people that wanted Him dead like we're just beyond furious and wanted to get rid of him. So he ended up, actually, I did do a quick Google search when we were talking about this episode. He actually does carbon sequestration credits now. So he moved on to an even bigger Scam. What? Yeah, so

it's none of the same people at Philos. I wonder if it's all new people.

Well, no, some of the same people are there and and there's also people in the industry that, and I'm not going to start naming names, because they'll end up in a whole dramatic bullshit again. But there's definitely people that people should that are look up to in the industry, that are definitely selling the industry out right now, that are involved with philos, and it's shitty and scummy. It's the

way it goes. Man, if they think they're going to be able to make money, but like I said, and I get it right, the data play is the biggest play, but I don't think it's going to work

out. It did sink them financially quite a bit, though. I mean, the only thing they've been able to really sell it all is some CBD and CBG lines and mostly overseas since that whole implosion happened, until the federal change. Now, suddenly, you know the month of the federal change that they have this new genetics out. But and if you look at the genetics, they're marketing, they're only advertising like 27 to 30% which is okay, you can find those on most better breeding websites, but the Terps are like 1.6 to 2% that's garbage compared to spectacular at all. Yeah, I could go to like, you know, grow cast, or any of the other places and find seeds that are going to produce much higher terms, you know, three to 4% Terps, and still hit those THC numbers and still have low chance of harming and all the other traits that they're they're bragging about. Yeah, that's just called being a decent breeder, or having, like, not crop genetics, like nothing on there is particularly special. It's not producing anything higher than what's available to the market right now, but they're doing it all with stolen genetics. So it's like, Bucha, there's no, there's no reason to support these people? Oh,

my God, man, it is. It is too, too funny. So that was, that was the big update on Philo. So Steve, they asked to come on my show. It's like, No, I just didn't respond to that. We're moving on. We're not trying to do a, do a whole nother expose a but it was funny that they were trying to come back on grow cast. You

should get them and Trevor on. You know what? I'm still friends with Dale hunt. Get get Dale hunt, the former lawyer for philos and and open cannabis project who left in protest. We got him on there too. Really fucking turn the thumbs down. If

this show is a little bit spicier, I think people like how we don't dip into that. But guys, let me know. Let me know. Listen, I'm here for you. So if you feel strongly one way or the other, I at least had to bring it up. Steve, I can't receive that email and not bring it up on the show.

Well, you know what? It'd be great if you like, what an old episode of like those 90s talk shows where they just keep bringing out someone that's gonna make them more and more over the course of the episode.

All right, we got them backstage right now. Bring out the grown meds. That's good, dude. That's fantastic. Too. Funny, dude. Like I said, I got that email, and I just had to bring it up on the show. We did talk about it more in membership, if you guys want to dig in, and the old episodes are posted up there now on Patreon. But, uh, funny stuff, man. It's a wacky, world out there. Steve isn't 2024 in cannabis, just wacky as fuck.

The other the other thing with phylus is they leaked their entire genetic database by accident, and me and two other people actually got a hold of it, that's right, and we decided not to release it because we didn't want to info dump the whole all these Bre. Your stuff, but we put it up online, so it's still online as a website. But if anyone ever has a legal battle with these assholes, let me know, and I will give you the website so you have access to their full you know, preserve database from from when, the least, when I got a hold of it, which I'm not going to say the date, but because I don't want to out anybody that leaked it. But there's a database online that's published, that has been published, that that is on the internet, that you know can be used to fight them if you do have a legal dispute with them.

Well, that's the problem, Steve. And to kind of put a put a pin in this, that's that's why I love copyleft and what they're doing and and, like I said, that's why we would ever even produce an episode on these guys. Anyways, there's plenty of people that lie in the cannabis industry, like you said, there's plenty of people that try to sell, you know, this or that up the river. The problem with philos was it seemed to me like there was a there was a legislative end game, right? Like the idea of patenting these genetics, the idea of restricting their access, it goes directly against what we stand for. And so that's one of the few ways you can kind of, you know, get on our bad side, so to speak. So it was just not, not something that we like to see, and it was one of the few times where I thought that an episode was deserved to get the information out there. So like I said, a comical follow up to that very, very strange episode five years ago. Good Lord, grow cast membership. It's the best move that you'll make in your garden. Come and join the greatest community in cannabis. It's waiting for you at grow cast podcast.com/membership, there's so much to enjoy about grow cast membership, from the bonus content to the members only discounts that'll save you your fees back and then some. But the best part is the community itself. There is no community like ours. A lot of imitators out there, but none quite like it. Not only are we vibrant and buzzing and very, very active and engaged, but we're also extremely positive. We focus on the plant. We focus on uplifting each other in our gardens, helping each other grow no matter what growth style we use we don't put each other down over our simple differences in growth styles. We don't put each other down over breeders or genetics choice. We simply help each other out and help each other on our own individual cultivation journeys. Plus, like I said, you get all these benefits. Hundreds of hours of bonus content, live stream. Video access. You can check out the members only video archive. Members Only discount, save big bucks on products like hlG lights, microbes from Brandon rust and OK, calyx, of course, discounts on grow cast seed CO as well as Rimrock, sex testing, rain science grow bags. There's so much up there. You'll save your 15 bucks a month back and then some. It's all waiting at growcast podcast.com/membership come and join the community. You will not regret it. We've been serving hundreds and 1000s of growers worldwide for years now, and I gotta tell you, everybody loves what we have going on in Grow cast membership better than ever. If you're an old member, come check out all the new offerings, all the new discounts, all the new content. You won't believe the content schedule that we have now. We release a ton and it's all there at growcast podcast.com/membership I'll see you there, everybody. Thank you to the members for making this show possible.

Well, Steve, let's move on to happier horizons here and talk to you about growing. Man, listen, you have been, I mean, you've been all over the world, growing. And I know that one of the bigger challenges that you face, and honestly, Steve, one of the things that you're most adept at, one of the things that you're, you're, you're most impressive knowledge base coming around from pest control, right? It's so funny to me, how when you have some good runs, it go, it'll go straight to your head, like you'll get big headed about it. You'll think you're a master grower. But I've noticed, like I said, when you especially when you travel, when you have to grow in a different environment, when you have to go into a foreign land with different species of insects, totally different input availabilities, all of these things, when you have to improvise, when you're put out of your comfort zone, and now you have to make a plant grow healthily from start to finish and get a good harvest, that is the sign of a true, talented grower. And I've said that about you before. I'm not just blowing smoke here. It's the truth. But like I said, IPM, a huge part of that, maybe the biggest part of that, you know, traveling to these different places. Would you agree with that? Steve, maybe we'll start there. You know, you grow in all these different places, different countries, different continents. How wildly different is it and how wildly different is your IPM approach?

Sure, yeah, the two biggest challenges when you go anywhere outside of the US, at least, is sourcing all of your stuff and then your IPM, and then sourcing your IPM. When I went to Africa, for instance, in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe has chemicals that they import, right? You can get paraquat at your hardware store in Zimbabwe, but they don't have, like, beneficial insects. They don't. Have Bavaria bassana, they don't have, like, any of your go to stuff that you would normally use in the cannabis grow for IPM. So we had to source everything from South Africa and from Kenya, because those are the only two countries that do beneficial insects or do bio controls. Everybody else is using chemical controls. So sometimes even just being, you know, the far edges of the Earth can be difficult to, like, simply get access to controls that aren't chemical based, because no one's educated them on that yet. So and sometimes too, like in Jamaica, we had to get, you know, exemptions for importing bio controls and stuff like that, and submit our paperwork to bring stuff to the island because they hadn't. No one had asked to use it before, even though it was still a safe bio control so that often can be a really big challenge. But when you go to a newer place, or you're trying to figure it out, if you can go to entomology museum, you know, oftentimes there's an Agricultural Museum, they're going to have a whole section on insects and the bad you know, what's the worst pests there? Right? You can immediately find that out when I went to Thailand, in Chiang Mai, they have a really amazing insect Museum in Chiang Mai, and has a whole section of just insects that attack crops, which was really cool to learn, because you can visually see them. Literally go

straight to the museum. That's hilarious. All right, I'm in a new place. Where's the nearest entomologist Museum. Let me see what I'm up against. It's like the character selection screen in Mortal Kombat.

Well, no, and it helps too, you know, there's almost always an agricultural university. You know, even in a country like Zimbabwe, they still have an agricultural school. In Harare, where, and they have, you know, a place you can go tour and see this. So it's not almost everybody has this. The other bit of it is, too, is you're talking to older farmers and just saying, hey, like, what has traditionally been the problem here? And then looking at your DLI, your daily light, integral. What's the average humidity, you know? What's the VPD of the area? What wind conditions do you have? Because a lot of insects will travel in the wind, you know, spider mites, white fly, thrips, all of them will blow in the wind and come right into your grow pretty easily if you're not prepared and set up for it. So thrips, in particular can be a big, big issue in the tropics. They seem to be the thing that's the hardest to get to zero. They're easy to keep from fucking the crop up, but they're hard to like, eliminate. You know what? I mean?

Yikes. Yeah, thrips are tough enough to begin with, let alone super thrips. Yep. So I think that one of the reasons why you might be a fan of something like IP Mo, which you've talked about on the show before, is, can you use that in any of those scenarios? Like, yeah, sure, it's hard to source these things, but if you're going to create your own bio controls, you can pretty much do that anywhere,

right? Yeah, it's definitely one of the big advantages to ipmo or even the Jadam there's a really good Jadam book, two really good books on Jadam now that are really good for benefit or for your your different beneficial controls, or by, you know, more natural controls in the case of Jadam. But yeah, ipmo is really, really awesome methodology. If anyone, whoever wants to see, like a step by step, they can go on my YouTube channel potent ponics. They have like a 20 minute video on on the creation of it, and then like another 15 minute video on application and brewing. But using the local insects there really, really helps. And when you're trying to determine that too, you know, using an app like iNaturalist, which is the other really good resource that I've used all over the place for identifying insects. So, you know, oh, this caterpillar can sing the shit out of you. Like, for instance, in Thailand, they have caterpillars that will give you a very, very bad sting. It almost feels like an electrical shock. It really sucks. But if you didn't know that that was there, you might pick them off to use them in your ipmo, and then, you know, suddenly discover that your hands on fire. There's something else that you need to be concerned with, especially in the tropics. Now, there are ones in the southern United States that do that too. They are, in fact, my my fiance got, got injured pretty badly on the leg a year or two ago before we met. It has a pretty good scar. She So, yeah, you got to be careful. There's actually blister beetles too that can can give you a really nasty rush in in Oklahoma and the planes. But I PMO actually works very good for them. It causes a lot of issues for cattle and livestock. People that keep livestock and chickens as well that can damage they're an intestate track, but you can gather them up or gather up other beetles on your property, Japanese beetles. It works really good as 30% of your IMO mix. So if you're doing a one kilogram batch of I Am I PMO, you're going to use about 300 grams of insect frass or locally collected insects. You can easily collect insects if you just get a light bulb or some Christmas lights and put them just above water in a bucket or a kid's tub or whatever, and then they'll fly the light and hit the. Water and get trapped, and then the sink in the water, you know, put a little bit like a wetting agent, or something like a little Yucca or something on the surface, or a couple drops of Yucca extractor, like you go to wedding, or any other wedding agent for for your root stuff, and put that in the water, and it'll immediately, you know, they'll sink right to the bottom, and they don't have any surface tension. So you can collect insects that way. In Thailand, they actually use that to collect bugs for their fish bonds. But you can use that just as a quick way overnight to collect a bunch of bugs, and the next day, just pour out the water, strain the insects out, and then use that for your IMO or ipmo Mix again,

if you're just now kind of getting into this sort of thing, the IPM, oh, being the microorganisms that break down those insect carcasses, and then you collecting those through an IMO collection, like an indigenous, indigenous microorganism collection. Again, if you want to see the step by step instructions, YouTube, potent ponics. Is the channel. And, yeah, Steve, it just sounds like, you know, we pay for a lot of these microbes anyways, whether you're using, like, brand name dipal, right, like Bacillus thuringiensis, or, why not collect your own right, out of nature. That's that sounds like the move. Are they effective? How do they work? You know, as opposed to things like oils, which we know, kind of suffocate the insects breathe holes or or things like sulfur or toxic sprays, how do these ipmo organisms devour or destroy the insects?

So they they do end up being much less toxic to the plants than oils, and they don't suffocate the the

plants. That's a good point. Yeah, they don't. They don't close the stomata and clog them up. Each stomata,

that's the word I was thinking of. They don't close and suffocate the stomata. I'm sorry. And some of the other cool things is so when you when you have the rice and the insect frost collection and the mic, the fungi break it down. When you do that, end of that five day collection that fungi has already started to break it down right? So it's producing a ton of chitinas, which when the plant detects chitinase and immediately thinks that the plant is under attack by insects. So it'll actually produce it'll boost its own immune response and SAR response to to insects because of the presence of the chitinase. It's also one of the reasons why, like malted barley, works really well as a treatment. Clackamas coup talks about that quite extensively, but so you have that aspect of it where the ipmo is triggering that, that response to the plant to defend itself. And then you also have the fact these fungi love to feed on the exoskeletons of the insects, or, you know, other parts of the insect. So now you have the spores from that as well that can directly infect new insects. So it's kind of like a one two punch. It increases the plant's resistance to the insects, but it also is allowing you to infect a wider range of insects. And it works on, you know, grasshoppers and crickets. It works on large beetles that are typically hard to treat, Japanese beetles and some of the other larger beetles that will feed on cannabis. Yeah, I can't remember the name of the really big ones. There isn't a really good go to spray out there or anything that does that much to them, except for the grubs. You know, you can always go with batiloss Galleria, and it kills the grubs and the ground over the winter, but it's not going to do anything once the adults are out and flying, right? So it gives you a great weapon against them. Leaf hoppers, which can be very, very difficult and out toward grows, seem to be very heavily affected by it. Leaf peppers, also, I found work. The other things to attack them if you mix two different types of a very bassana, or two or three species strains of bare bassana, that hybrid strain that you create by mixing them seems to have a better efficacy rate than doing them individually. So if you're for having issues with bio and your bio controls aren't working, and you're using a nice area human serac or a Bavaria bassana based product. Try blending multiple different strains. So get a couple different brands of that same view with that same active ingredient, and then brew that for 12 to 24 hours in a simple, you know, tea brew, or a bucket with an air stone before application, just to allow them to hybridize a little bit before application. And that can be a really good way to increase your efficacy and infection rate when you're using bio controls.

That is amazing advice. So they even like mingle with each other and create a new super weapon. Like, that's, that's the opposite of other sprays, right? Like, for instance, you never want to mix oil and sulfur. Don't mix these things, pretty much. Don't mix anything. But you're saying when you're using bio controls, you go for that diversity, and not only that, you bubble them and kind of blend and hybridize them. That is mind blowing. Man. I have not heard of that before. I like that. Yeah,

there's a really good fire. Even one that we used to use in Thailand that was five different bio controls blended together. And it was really cool, because each one was kind of targeting a different aspect of of the insect world, right? So one was more for catalpiddles and grubs. One was more for this and that, you know, demilitarized in it, and some other stuff that you don't see in the US, and that's something else that really sucks about in the United States, they don't allow, to my knowledge, multiple bio controls in one product, right? But you can totally mix them. So if I want to do like bare bassana and a serif you Mr. AC, you can blend those on application and do it just fine, and there's no problem. But you can't buy a product that has multiple owners. And Thailand as an example, you can buy products that have 2345, different bio controls in one powdered product that is a, you know, wettable powder, that is good to go. So that's something else too. I think people need to think more on Hey. Like, if you're doing spray application and you're going to do bio controls, blend a couple of them together. You can mix mentor, Bassiana and I serif, you mister ACA, and you've just nuked like 95 98% of the insects that can attack your plant. You know you're covering your wide range of bases by doing that. So that's amazing. Another thing too is to think about is when your application, when to do it, so that you're not accidentally killing pollinators, or you're getting the best efficacy rate as well. So for instance, you should really be spraying your plants, you know, right after the sun goes down, or right after your lights go off for insects, because one, you're zero chance of hitting any bees or pollinators. So if you're worried about that, especially with ipmo, you will kill bees with it. And the very bossiana can kill bees. You know, many of these bio controls have Levi cera state can also kill bees. So if you're if you're too liberal with it, you can actually fuck up your local bee population, which none of us want to do. So that's one thing I'm really looking at. And then two, a lot of the insects will roost up for the night that are feeding on your plants and are not moving around so much. So when you go in and spray them, you're not having to, you know, deal with them being so active. So they tend to be much less active.

Go with the night attack. I love it, man. This is all really great advice. The

other good thing about doing it at night, get out there with a black light, and you can scout, especially if you're dealing with outdoor plants, like, come July, August, when the caterpillars start coming out a little bit more heavily. You get out there with a black light, like a party, battery powered black light, like you take to a festival, and you look at your plants, and might, you know, break the night cycle for that one night, or whatever, a little bit, but because you're triggering the UV in it, but you're you can very easily see the caterpillars like neon. So if you get out there regularly, you know you can do it right after dark, so you're not really screwing up the light cycle, or right before dawn, whatever's more preferable to you, and then immediately find your caterpillars, or beetles, or a lot of other insects stick out like a sore thumb in the dark with the black light, and they're just neon on your plants so that you can be, oh, hey, I actually have a problem I didn't realize I had. Or, hey, we can just pick off a couple of caterpillars and not have to worry about, you know, damage. Oh

yeah, all the scorpions will light up for you, man, so you can check them out. Oh yeah, yeah. Man, that's, that's, there's some creepy crawlies out there. Molokai is some of the heaviest pest pressure. Steve, I've never seen anything like it. I now see why Monsanto does their freaking testing out there. You know what I mean, not just in a remote place, but there is such heavy pest pressure and different varieties, right? Bugs I've never heard of, like spit bugs and then classics like spider mites and caterpillars, even unexpected enemies, like rats. They have these big old ship rats in Hawaii. You know what I mean? They brought them over on ships in like the 1700s or whatever, and so they jump from mast to mast on the ships, you know, at sea in Hawaii, they jump from tree to tree. They live up in the trees, and they came down and ate all our seedlings. I was like, God damn, I've I'd never had to battle rats before. Steve, I knew that they were a possible pest, but I didn't know that they were they were on the list, the most wanted list there in Hawaii. I'm sure you've dealt with crazy types of insects or unexpected types of infestations. What is the craziest thing that you've had to battle

in a grow? I mean, I've done consulting. Doing consulting, you get invited to people's growth and they should have called you. Three months ago, there was a there was a bong aphid infestation I had in Colorado, this one farm that was so bad, there was as much weight and biomass of aphids, as there was plant material in that girl, I'm not exaggerating. Oh, my God, another girl that had a similar amount of aphids, but they're all root aphids, so, like, every square inch. But that one was really good, because I was able to, like, throw everything in the kitchen sink at it and see what worked with, like, the word. So the worst root aphid infestation. So that one was was good, and what ended up working was doing root drenches with a seria few. Mr. ACA. Oh, wow, and rove beetles, yeah, like an Cora or PFR 97 or the more commercial versions, a little more concentrated than no fly, but no fly will work. But we were using a alternating ancora and PFR 97 and then just released on the upper end of the rove beetle release rate for every week for for a month and a half, which, again, wasn't the cheapest, but we're able to save a bunch of plants.

Wow. And do that like, really eradicate them. I know that it's hard to even survive the run when they're that deep. But did you get rid of them with that method?

Yeah, no, we got rid of them. It took two months, but we got rid of them. Wow. Holy shit, dude, you knocked the numbers down with the bio control drenched root drenches. So you just when you water, you mix in the anchor or PFR 97 and you use it as when you water it into the roots. And then you you just do your release rates after that's been you knock them down to 90, you know, one or 2% of what the original number was. Then you can use the hunter seekers, with the rope beetles, to kind of hunt down anybody that survived.

Have you had to deal with any other, maybe larger types of animals you ever had any like large cat problems in Thailand, or bears or anything like that.

In Zimbabwe, we had kudu that would come through. And kudu is like a giant. They're like an elk size antelope. They're huge. It's like a moose. So they would hop the fence, not quite as big as a moose, but they're, they're bigger than a deer, like considerably bigger than a deer, so they're more like elk size, but they, yeah, but that they were a problem. And then there was a hemp grow, or it was a planned hemp grow. We didn't, we never launched it because the COVID stuff, but we were, there's a property we looked at, and we're planning originally on setting up in northern Zimbabwe, where we had hippos that were coming out of the river that we were concerned with them smashing everything to shit. So we were trying to figure out how we were gonna fence that off. And, you know, it works really good for hippos and elephants, which I learned this is, this is how you deal with, like, really big, heavy, if you have a really, that doesn't work for deer. Well, it might work for deer and stuff. But you make like a jetty around the grow. So you get a bunch of rock, and because it's uneven, and they weigh so much, they can't walk across it without getting hurt, right? So they won't

cross it. So you make like uneven footing for them, yeah? So

you make, yeah, you make like jagged rocks that are around it, and it's you can walk. A human can walk across it, no problem. But the elephants can't. They have to either move the rocks out of the way to get through it, or or whatever. So what they do is they put the rock jetties all around the groves, and then they put beams up so they'll have these like poles they put in the ground, and then they run line between the poles. And then they have these hanging bee baskets where they do beehives. And if the elephants try to cross it and try to fuck with the rocks, they eventually hit the pole with the line, and then they hit the string with the line. It pisses the bees off. And elephants really hate bees. So that was how the that was how the locals dealt with the elephants and the all the crazy wildlife there

that is wild man. Do you have any other stories on hand like that about how people deal with IPM, elephant, hippo repellent? I don't know if it gets any better than that, but what else have you seen like that? I'm

trying to think of anything else that was particularly crazy. I've seen people spray their plants with all kinds of stupid I'm talking about genius ones like

that, Windex, oh, my god, yeah,

oxy clean. People use oxy clean because it'll increase the oxygen from the plants. I got that one. Oh, phone call on that one. In terms of, like, genius stuff, in Jamaica, they make some, like, really terpy, like, essential oil mixes, just for the, for the for bug spray, but that's not anything. Oh no, that's cool, but it's not particularly

No, I think, I think you've got the other ones. I've got you I think you've got the story topped with the fucking hippo repellent. It's not a, it's not a pest that I want to see in my grow okay. Is it hippo, elephant,

the one that was kind of like, oh, fuck, oh, fuck. Was this dealing with the grasshoppers and zoom, after COVID broke out because they sealed the borders and couldn't import anything anymore, wow. And that was how we came and figured out ipmo was. Was I basically panicked, because we didn't, we couldn't import our stuff anymore, and we were really struggling to deal with them to begin with. And then I asked Chris, I said, hey, what can I do? I don't I'm running out of ideas and and Chris Trump was like, hey, try this. Ipmo. We had it work on weevils and beetles on our macadamia nut trees, but we never really, like fleshed it out or tried to test it on, like other crops and stuff. So he gave me the rest of. You for that, and we tweaked it a little bit, just for the sake of speed of production. On my version, I like to do the insects directly in the IMO one collection, and he prefers to add the insects in the IMO three

stage. I just think that's funny, because you have two different little like recipes of your sauce, that's great.

Yeah. So, so that's the difference between Chris's version and my version. If you have time, like if you're planning it and you're doing it ahead of time, I agree with Chris on that you want to take it all the way to an IMO four or ipmo Four, which is same as as you would with the ipmo from the recipe that I have on my show on my YouTube. But if you don't have time and you're panicking and there's insects already over, running or grow, by the time you make, IMO, four, your plants are gone, right, right? So if I need to do something and immediately make it tomorrow, you know, or within the next week, which is really it takes at least, you know, five, six days to make it from scratch, you know, that gives me a week. I can kind of, keep the plants alive for a week, right? I can't keep the plants alive for a month, you know, if I'm already dealing with an infestation. So it gives people a quick action way to, kind of, you know, get something out the door and onto the plants. It'll help, you know, fend off that kind of stuff.

Man, I want to do an ipmo challenge in the discord. Maybe we'll do that and have people collect their own bio controls. I just think that's so cool, and it would make sense to me that it works better on the ones that are hard to battle as is right, like if we're spraying something topical, especially, especially if it's something like an enzyme product that's supposed to break down this insect. Man that's not gonna work on a beetle like you said, that's like a mech suit that that beetle is in, that that enzyme is going to bounce right off of it, even oils are going to bounce right off of it. Grasshoppers, I had the hardest time with dude. I just they're really, really tough. They're mobile. They love just eating the foliage. Grasshoppers are one of the worst. So it makes sense to me that these, what are essentially like spores, Right? Steve, get all up in their armor and all up in their suit, and kind of begin to grow and establish and eventually devour them. Is that where this product really shines is on, like you said, the well armored insects, yeah.

And part of the reason why, too, is that most of these spores are being uptaken through the respiratory system, so they're breathing them in after application, the spore is dry, and then they they'll eventually kind of start to, you know, get airborne, off, off the surface of the plant, and that, or the insect, is going to devour them, one or the other, and then they'll infect them that way. So that's usually the mode of action. Or, you know, they'll crawl across them and get infected that way. And then when they clean themselves, that's one of the reasons why, like boric acid and boron works really well against insects, is it doesn't kill them on contact, but as soon as they clean themselves. And that's why, like social insects and stuff, like ants and roaches, like often clean each other quite a bit. That's why it works well on them. That

makes so much sense. So it's getting inside their digestive system, inside their respiratory system, and yeah, that's a terrible way to die. But you know what? They shouldn't have they shouldn't have picked my garden. They should have picked a different plant to inhabit on really cool stuff. Dude, like I said, keep an eye out for an ipmo challenge, because I just think that that's something that is really, really cool, and every grower should probably try at least once.

So Steve, what do

you suggest we do from a biodiversity perspective? Like, let's say we're a home grower, and maybe we don't even grow organically yet. You know what I mean? Maybe we're just growing hydroponics or, you know, growing in cocoa or growing in DWC, but we're interested in the power of microbiology. How would you take someone's existing grow without saying, like, hey, switch to super soil. Man, right. How would you increase the biodiversity in a home grower setup who is just now getting

started? Yes. I mean, the best thing to do, one, if you really don't want to go too crazy, is just get a hold of some, you know, store bought microbes like a mycorrhizal fungi. Or recharge my friends over at do grows, or, I know Brandon Ross is a really good micro blind now, you know, and in just buy the product, put it in your system and be done with it. And, you know, easy peasy lemon squeezy. If you want to start to cultivate your own and get a little more hands on, spend a little bit of time doing it. Definitely check out Chris Trump and his channel, and then my YouTube channel as well. We both have a lot of good resources, but IMO is really going to be the best thing that you can put in. And I know that sounds like all the KNF people always harp on it, and everyone, like, rolls their eyes, and they're like, I just want to do labs. And it's like, yeah, that's cool, but I labs or in IMO, but then it also has a ton of other beneficial insects that also really help you, you know, with other aspects of your garden. So it really is something that I think people need to kind of take seriously. And the reason why is because it really helps boost your plants. It makes increases, bigger, increases terpenes, which is honestly. The biggest reason why you should be doing it is because it will increase turkeys you're active, and you're activating all those other secondary metabolites by turning those genes on right the the plants that are in hydro, for instance, always taste really bland. Same thing with like lettuce and tomatoes at a grocery store that are hydro grown because there's no microbes to activate the secondary metabolites, you have to have the microbes in the root zone or the leaf surface to turn the genes on in the plant. So it says, oh, there's mold in my environment. Even if it's non pathogenic, I had better make some mold fighting compounds so that I don't have any issues later on in the Grow season. The plant has to have them present in order for it to know to spend energy on it. Otherwise, you know, the plants is going to be doing the most efficient thing, which is not spend resources on those, you know, producing compounds that doesn't feel like it needs to live or protect itself, right? So that's why living soil and aquaponics both tend to have way higher terpenes than high you know, hydro or, you know, cocoa or some of the other grow methods, is because of the increased biodiversity and microbes in the root zone. If you don't have that, you know, you're not turning those genes on. So, and what that translates into is your flavonoids, your terpenes, your esters, you're just not going to get those, you know, production to be the same level. So that's the number one reason why you should do it. But it also helps prevent against mold and insects, and you know, other environmental factors that are going to screw up your plants, they're going to be more able to defend themselves,

strictly from a plant biodiversity kind of rhizosphere perspective, would you even recommend IMO over composting, beginning composting and

why? Yeah, I mean, IMO is just going to give you the instant, you know, availability. It's quicker to make it's much faster. Yeah, so whereas compost takes a long time and you can screw up composting a lot easier than you can screw up IMO. Oh,

damn, you guys screw things up pretty well, Steve, because you

can visually see and smell with IMO, if you did it right, right? Like, if it smells off, it means you fucked it up. You have that ability to see it. Or, you know, if I do an IML collection, it should be mostly white, it should be 80, 85% white, maybe a little bit a couple of other spatterings of colors. But it shouldn't be all green. It shouldn't be all orange or red. You know, if I visually see that it is, I can just throw away that batch and not not use it, right? So you kind of have these like checks every time that you do do the IMO process to kind of help you know and understand and see visually, or through smell or through some other easily detectable method that doesn't require a microscope, that you did it right, right? And I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of people push, IMO, in particular over Jadam is because you can't, you'll have any of that with job stinks like Jadam, if you almost can't even do Jadam in an indoor grow, because it smells so bad. You know what I mean, the the fermented leaf fertilizer and all that other stuff. It smells terrible, right? It's not, doesn't. And you can often grow, you know, anaerobic microbes that are not beneficial to your garden. Now I'm just saying that anaerobes are bad, but too many of them definitely are. So that's why I don't particularly like chidam, and especially people are just getting started with natural farming, like stick to KNF. It's way safer, it's way harder to screw up. Yes, you do have to have the reliance on sugar. I know some people have, like, a ethical or moral issue with the sugar stuff, but it really is a much easier and cleaner way, especially doing commercial you know, Jadam is not really an option, because you can way too easily add a pathogen to the system. I've seen people spread septoria using some of the Jadam inputs, especially the microbial solution, you know, accidentally propagating septoria that way. So whereas I've never once seen that with KNF, because you have so much separate fungi, the metabolites of that separate fungi, which you can visually see, you know, with their nice white collection, colony, is going to kill off any of those things like septoria. So that's one, you know, one of the reasons why, again, for cannabis, I know a lot of people like Jadam, but maybe you can get away with it outdoors. You can do it indoors, and you really shouldn't take that risk if you're doing it. You know, between the Aspergillus and the septoria, you're really making your life harder if you're doing Jadam over over natural farming with IMO, I

think that's a pretty sound advice. As far as starting with the basics, right? Is somebody who is, you know, beyond a novice, or rather, before a novice. In this subject, you know, you want to start with something that'll be easy. You want to start with something that'll have success and won't hurt your grow or go sideways. So I understand that. I respect that point of view. Well, damn Steve, we're right here, here at the top of the hour. That was a really fast episode, really good stuff, everything from the from the philos talk in the beginning to your awesome IPM explorations and stories and talking about microbes and ipmo. I can't wait to do a challenge on that, man, that'll be a lot of fun. Thank you for always hanging out in our Discord, by the way. It's cool to see you, and they're kicking it, and we get to smoke and voice chat from time to time. That's always fun. But Steve, where can people find you? Man, here at the end of the episode, where can people follow? Where can people

hear more? Sure, yeah, you can find me on poem, comics and suncloud, YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, Rumble, Odyssey, all the things. And then you can also find me for classes. You can find me at the pest class com, if you want to learn about living soil and aquaponic pest control. We have the apmj class com for aquaponic cannabis classes, if you want to learn all about aquaponic growing in cannabis. And then I have a brand new aquaponic master class, which kind of covers everything there is snow. We don't go into cannabis specifically on it, but we do cover everything you need to know on the plant side of many, many different crops. Cover 100 different crops, and we cover over seven days of content and counting. I haven't even finished editing all of it. We're only up to seven days. So you can definitely check that out over at online aquaponics class com, and we have a in person class in May on May 22 in Oklahoma, if you're wanting to come check it out and learn in person, we have a five day version of the master class that will be available online June 1. The in person is on May 22 in big speed Oklahoma, which is just south of Tulsa, about 45 minutes. So if you're wanting to check that out, check it out. Aquaponic masterclass.com and you can find all the info out on there. There's hotels listings on there for what's nearby. And I'm teaching that with all the branch aquaponics, which is a really cool guy. He is good friends with, okay calyx, who I know you have on the podcast on a similar basis. He also works with with the farm that I'll be teaching at. But Bob from Olive Branch has also worked in Africa. So he worked on acre scale aquaponics in Kenya. So small him and I have worked, yeah, did you bump into no no? Him and I actually got going with a couple different farms in Oklahoma originally, and then both ended up working in Africa and sharing some resources on where to supply different things and where to get beneficial insects and all that kind of stuff. So him and I'll be teaching the course out there. I'll be doing most of the lecturing, and he'll be doing most of the in person, hands on stuff. So check it out. We'll be giving away all kinds of goodies and all kinds of other fun things if we come to the class. So we'll definitely have, you know, sibling walls and seeds and all kinds of other fun things available to try out if you're if you end up coming to the class. So check that out at aquaponic masterclass.com if you're wanting to take a five day intensive course. More on the college level. In terms of content, we really do cover everything in depth and high level of detail, from fish keeping to insects to design to hybrid systems to maximizing production for each individual crop. Man,

keep up the good work. Steve, stay safe on all your crazy adventures and travels, stay safe from the hippos out there. I hear they're the most dangerous and anything growcast could do for you. Man, we appreciate you. We appreciate your education. And like I said, Stay safe, my friend. You too. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Steve and thank you, dear listener. That is all for now. I know you loved this episode. Stay tuned. Grow cast podcast.com. Is where you find everything. Check it out. Check out membership. It'll be the best move you make for your grow. It's all up there. Thank you to the members, and thank you for just tuning in. I appreciate you. That's all for now. This is Steve razner and Jordan River signing off, saying, Be safe out there, everybody, and grow smarter. That's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in, everybody. I appreciate each and every one of you. Of course, grow cast podcast.com, there. You can find everything. It's what we're doing. We got the membership up there. Join up. It'll be the best decision you make. Quick shout out to rain science grow bags. That's right, rain science, grow bags.com. For the best containers around they are heavy duty mesh, and they last a lifetime, folks. You just buy it and you'll use it for the rest of your life. You'll pass it down to your kids. That's what we like about rain science grow bags. These mesh grow bags, let your pot breathe. Those roots grow out to the edges, and they air prune, which makes the lateral rooting even more vigorous, increasing the overall root density and the health of your plant by increasing nutrient exchange. Rain science grow bags.com. Are the best bags. They have grommets built into the size for low stress training. They've got different porosities, different colors, whatever you like. It's up there all the way from tiny little propagation cones to three gallons, five gallons, 10 gallons, huge beds, 25 gallon pots, 30 gallon pots, whatever you need. They've got it at rain science, grow bags.com. Use code grow, cast for 10% off. Or just go join membership and get the secret 20% off. Code, that's code grow, cast for 10% off at rain science, grow. Bags and members get 20% off at growcast podcast.com/membership. Thank you to rain science, grow bags. All right, everyone, that's it for now. Thank you for listening. Be safe out there. Be happy. I'll see you soon. Bye, bye. You

I've seen people spray their plants with all kinds of stupid shit and.