♻️Brandon Rust Talks Nutrient Dynamics, CalSil+, Heat Waves and More.

9:28AM Jan 29, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Keywords:

nutrient dynamics

calcium silica

heat waves

silica benefits

nutrient balancing

soil testing

microbial metabolism

pH stabilization

transplant shock

silica products

potassium silicate

organic fertilizers

root development

cannabis cultivation

nutrient imbalance

Greetings, cultivators worldwide. Jordan River here back with more growcast, just for you both nutritious and dynamic. Today, we've got friend of the show, Brandon rust back on the line. He's here today to talk about nutrient dynamics, nutrient balancing, growing in soil, calcium, silica. This is a great episode. I know you're gonna love the deep dive into nutrition before we join Brandon rust though. Shout out to AC infinity. That's right. Acinity.com, code grow, cast one five for the biggest savings that you can get. And you can get yourself anything you need to get started growing, everything you need to get started growing. Whole tent kits. They got grow tents. They got inline fans. They got oscillating fans, lights pots. Now they even have the brand new refillable filter. This is the last filter you're ever gonna buy, because you can refill the activated carbon inside of it. So grab the last filter you're ever gonna need at AC infinity.com, or grab a whole Grow Tent kit. Expand that garden. Use code, grow cast one five. They make the best tents in the Game, Best inline fans in the game, and so much more, from scissors to ratchets to pots, lights, tents and fans. You'll find it all at AC infinity.com. Use code growcast One five and grab one of the new refillable carbon filters. Thank you to AC infinity. All right, let's get into it with Brandon Russ. 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 again for tuning in today, as always, before we get started, I urge you to share this show. Tell a friend about grow cast, turn someone on to growing. It's the best thing you can do to help us out, and it helps us on our mission of overgrow, because if we all grew, then there would be enough food and medicine to go around for everybody. Check us out at growcast podcast.com follow us on Spotify, whatever app you're using. We would love to have you. And of course, check out our amazing membership at growcast podcast.com/membership today, we have one of my good friends on the line. He's a friend of grow cast. He's the creator of Bucha earthworks. He is a nutrient dynamic specialist, a breeder, and so much more joining us again for the first time in a while, Brandon rust is on the program.

How's it going? Thanks for having me. I appreciate you having me back, and it's always good to be able to chop it up, talk shop and nerd out on plant science. That's

your bread and butter, man. We were just hanging out at your house, checking out your awesome garden, which is ripping, and we got into it right away. Right? You're always talking about nutrient dynamics, optimizing nutrition for cannabis. I love talking about this stuff, man. But before we get into all of that, what have you been up to? What's Bokashi earthworks been up to give us a little update? Yeah,

sure. So you know, as a small company, we've always been growing every year, and so we have done some new hiring. We got a lady in office that does all of our in house, accounting, finance, payroll, business management, frees me up to be able to focus my pursuits on the things that I'm best at, which is education and the consulting side of all this. So we've got that business is going well. We're still doing the microbes manufacturing microbes doing the you make fertilizers with NASA agricultural technologies. We're going to be releasing the Nutri pot Cup, the fully compostable first ever single replacement for single use plastics, fertilizer cup and placement for that's awesome fertilizers. I love that Nutri

pot. I remember when you came on this show, when you were developing that, and just talking about that, we met up in Chicago, Illinois, and we sat in a car, and you were talking to me about this nutripot, and here we are. This is a biodegradable, completely sustainable container made of minerals, right, or at least imbued with minerals. Let's

say, yeah. So the Smart Carbon is a stabilized and reacted humic folic acids. They act as carbon chelation elements. So you could have all of your plant mineral nutrition, even nitrogen, you know, it's complex in a carbon and so it doesn't react with other elements in soil. And since it's all been stabilized, you can, you can dry it out like I have these manure based cups that we coat with the Smart Carbon, and then this all just break down, release that fertilizer right at the root zone. And it helps with water observation, so it it will attract and hold moisture, which will help with water retention. And it's just a, you know, it's a it's a better alternative to single use plastics, because you always throw away these plastic containers that your plant varieties come in, and then you disturb the roots during transplant. So we're reducing transplant shock. We're creating a solution for single use plastics. Then we're also decreasing the labor that's and costs associated with the start of fertilizer. Because you have to purchase the storage fertilizer, and then you also have to go and apply that fertilizer after your plants are in the ground, or once the plants are emerging as seeds. And so it offers a solution that decrease all costs in many different ways, and mitigates some of the harmful effects of transplanting things like that, and that mitigates the effects of plastic use. And so it's just a better mouse trap, really. It's better mouse trap for for seed starts.

I like that, man, I like that. And any little edge you can get as a grower, right? You talk about reducing transplant shock and not having that, that disturbance, I'm really getting into that. I'm really getting into the areas where cultivators can get very, very talented, and they have their standards and their practices, you know, and they have their little system, but dialing in on those little things and getting little edges. I absolutely love the nutripod idea. I'm excited to try one of those myself.

Yeah, well, expressing a cultivars genetic potential is a game of nuance, you know, because you can be a really great grower, but it's finding out all of the small things, like, oh, maybe this cultivar doesn't like as much nitrogen. Maybe it doesn't need as much potassium, you know, to maximize what it what it's going to do. Or maybe, you know, it wants less water, maybe it wants a drier soil, maybe it wants less nutrition, maybe it wants more nutrition. So finding all those different nuances within the genetic variances of of plants can really increase the overall quality

you're so, right, man, I think that's one of the reasons, a good argument for sticking with cultivars for some time. I love popping seeds and hunting, you know, don't get me wrong. But like, sometimes it takes a few years to get to know these strains, to really get to know them. And so are you really giving these genetics a fair shot if you're just popping them once, and being like, yeah, that one was finicky. Now I'm popping a new one. It's like, Well, did you take the time to learn this cultivar? You know what I mean? It's a very interesting point. Yeah.

And you know, one of the things that we've developed with the programs SOPs and testing protocols, is being able to figure out those nuances amongst genetic variances as far as nutrition goes. Because we can, we can use a the target, the range that works for most cannabis, and then we can dial up or down each individual mineral element depending on what's falling into solution, what's making it into the tissue, and then what the plant is actually moving around internally. So we would use soil test, a leaf tissue test and SAP analysis. For that, it can be pricey because you're testing several times through a run, but it's all about data collection, so that way, you can really dial in a specific variety, especially if you're like a farm, and you're going to run something continuously for a long period of time, and you don't want to have to take a year to try to dial in it. You want to know what are the nuances within this plant, and how to expose those nuances and then put them into a practical use situation where you're adjusting target nutritional levels for that specific variety. Dude,

I absolutely love that, and I guess that's the way to do it right, is through testing. That's why I like what you're doing. You got the organic side going, you're pushing the microbiology, but you're all about the testing and the data. Yeah, so what are we talking about today? We're talking about silica. We're talking about heat. You know, it is hot out there in a lot of people's garden. Man, holy crap. Is it hot? It was like 110 for a week out

here. And I want to talk about dealing with heat. You

know, people say, add silica. Silica is this really important mineral when it comes to temperature swings and heat resistance. I want to get into what silica does, why it's important to us as cannabis growers and surviving this incredible heat wave. So let's start from the beginning. You have a great product called calcil. I know you dig deeper my go to, that's your go to. My go to for calcium now is calcil. So yeah, let's split this up into two parts and start one before the other. Talk to me about silica, how it works in nature, with plants and silica in the natural world.

So silica is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust. However, it's usually tied up in in metal lattices. So it's molecularly tied up in parent appetite material, other metals, other minerals, yeah, so, uh, iron, calcium, aluminum, they'll usually make, you know, lattices, uh, like, if maybe it's granite, or maybe it's a different, you know, different types of mineral elements or types of stone that are in soils, depending on what your soil type is. If it's a sandstone, if it's, you know, really rocky, there's, there's different scenarios, depending on your geographical location. And so you'll have different. Levels of silica in those minerals, and they have to be soluble ice into Silic acid, which is the available form. Now, there are natural minerals that can naturally contain extremely high amounts of silica, one of those being a mineral called will last the night. And there's a last night mine here in the US, and that is essentially, it's mostly calcium and silica. So we're looking at about 44% calcium and about 51% silica, about almost 2% magnesium, and then about half of a percent of iron in this mineral. Oh, wow.

I've not heard of this mineral, yeah, just what left by wooly mammoths

last night. It is, again, silica. It is, it's just, it's a naturally mined mineral comes right out of the earth. That's what, that's what the calcium is, calcium, silica, so it contains those other beneficial elements. You know, if we're looking at iron, that's a photosynthetic element. So is magnesium. Magnesium is at the center of all the chlorophyll, and so we're getting a little bit of those when you're using this. The reason why I like it so much is because, even though silica is not considered a plant nutrient, it has a ton of benefits, one being biotic and abiotic, stress mitigation. So temperature, like you just mentioned, being able to have the ability for the plant to withstand higher temperatures or even lower temperatures, is one of the benefits of having enough available silica in your system, because it strengthens cells. It also up regulates some genetic responses in plants as well. The calcium, for me is like become my go to so I was originally using it only as a pH stabilizer in my soil system. So when I would go and look at data, if I had my pH was starting to drop, which naturally occurs. So acidification naturally occurs, especially when you have high amounts of carbon and microbial activity, because the metabolites, the enzymes, organic acids, microbiology is producing, naturally drops pH over time. And so I was originally just using the calcium silica as a pH adjustment, so that way, because it works slowly as well. So when you add in the calcium silica into a system that's going to slowly acidify over time, this is going to naturally make it more alkaline, right? So it's going to offset the effect of those microbial metabolism and that drop in the pH from the microbial metabolism, so that way you can keep a consistent pH using that. And so I still do that, but oftentimes I see myself using the calcium silica as a calcium source, over something like gypsum or over, like oyster shell, because I don't like the ocean inputs, but especially gypsum, because gypsum was always my go to but it also brings in that extra sulfur, and that usually what we're seeing is the sulfur will start to increase and increase as we're using using, you know, micronutrient sulfates to Make sure that we have adequate micronutrients in that soil system, and then also things like Epsom salt, which is magnesium sulfate, which we'll use, you know, to address magnesium and so we wanted to mitigate some of those high sulfur levels as well so we can get the calcium that we need. And I especially love the front load calcium and veg, you know, really build up that calcium, because I like to see about a two to one calcium to nitrogen ratio. So I like to see two times the calcium versus what the nitrogen. And when I see that, I see really, really strong plants, like, what happens if you have too much nitrogen, not enough calcium, the cells will expand, but they won't be rigid. They won't have that strength, because that cellular strength is going to be coming from the calcium and silica has a big part to play with that as well, because silica helps mediate some of the biochemical sequencing, the process of events that happens internally to build up, you know, cell walls and and the structures that are responsible for the rigidity of the plant.

I would like to talk about that. So you said a few interesting things. First of all, you talk about silica helping with heat, which I've heard about, but you referred to it as something very specific. Did you say the osmotic stress response, you said it helps with both heat and cold. Helps with temperature regulation in general, is what you're saying. Well,

think about this. If Have you ever played with like a silica element, like a Agil 16 potassium silica, for instance, or some other silica minerals, once you start getting them? What? It, they become kind of slimy and slippery. And so what happens is the plant can actually take up the available silica and then they'll turn them into these types of compounds which are reinforcing walls. They're building, these type of silica lattices with calcium and the boron inside of the cell to actually increase the cell strength. And because silica has those properties, like we use silica for baking mass and stuff like that, silica has a high heat index, and it has a high tolerance for low temperatures as well. And so the plant, the Think about the the chemicals that the plant is actually creating. They're creating these new compounds internally that are building up their cell structures with that silica. The silica is actually creating those type of compounds internally, and actually have a paper that talks about it. There's a paper called silica, and plants as current knowledge and technological perspectives is one of them. And it goes over a lot of you know why these things work and how these things work.

So you're saying that the compounds that are created within the cell are are helpful to temperature regulation

in general? Yeah. I mean, like, there's there's, it does so much, dude. Like, you could probably write an entire book just on silica and all the different things it does. But we have, like, silica priming. I have some stuff here that I actually highlighted from reading and stuff. Silica causes alterations of carbon, nitrogen balance in the source sink relationship under UN stress conditions by favoring a remobilization of amino acids to support the increased nitrogen man during brain development, things like that. So we're talking what that means is essentially that they're able to balance out that calcium to nitrogen ratio that I was just talking about, like, if you have too much nitrogen, the cells expand and they don't have strength. If you have too much calcium, you're going to have plants that are not growing to their maximum potential, because their limiting factor is that nitrogen and so silica can help mitigate that. It can help with maintaining the ratio balance between calcium and

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again, nutrient dynamics has to be really approached holistically. But typically, when I'm looking at a soil test and if someone's having an issue, there's typically a couple of things that could be wrong, something like excess sodium, which, if you have too much sodium, which is positive charge, it's going to block other things that have positive charge, like calcium, magnesium, between magnesium, potassium, so it's antagonistic to other elements. A lot of those types of relationships, yeah, they exist across a wide spectrum. And so there's different relationships that occur with different elements in soil and so having much, let's say, calcium, okay, that can also be antagonistic to things like that are beneficial, like magnesium and potassium. And it also can be antagonistic to phosphorus, too. Though, even though phosphorus isn't a positively charged molecule, what'll happen is in higher. Is when phosphate, phosphate anion is liberated, because it is so highly reactive and it's negative, wants to bond to something that's positive. And so an excess of calcium or magnesium can actually tie up plant available phosphorus. So there's tons of different nutrient dynamics that are always playing out. And you know, I could make a list, and somebody has made a list called the molders chart, right? And so you it's really hard to understand the molders chart. I can look at it and I understand those nutrient interactions because I already know why the green arrow is going to, you know, x element, why the red arrow is going to x element, it's because of the charge that's associated with the ion, which is the plant available form of that element. And you know how those things are going to kind of work from a biochemical sequence when it comes to both carbon and biology, and then also how they're going to work chemically and interact with each other. So those are really important. And silica, again, helps with charge balance, but it also just does all of these fantastic things, right? Like enhances biomass for, you know, fiber crops, for instance, or increases biosynthesis of, you know, phyto hormones. It just does all this stuff. And there's all this research on all these different metabolic pathways that show that when silica is introduced, and it's in a high enough available form for the plant to access that it up regulates acquired systemic resistance by stimulating, again, just monic and ethylene pathways, it it stimulates plant immune defense systems through up regulating gene transcription. Jesus, it creates these kind of like silica gel compounds inside of the plant, which makes it so that they're less prone to freezing or extreme temperatures. There's so many different benefits, and it's one of the reasons why so many people pay a lot of money for silica products. Because if you look at something like power side, which is typically it'll take a mineral and they'll process it, and so you'll have have it in available form there, you have to kind of understand that there are other elements out there too that will be biologically mediated, or even just in the presence of water becomes soluble and can be used out much more cost effective method. So, dude, it's so crazy. The the osmotic stress alleviation, it's just their soul. The list goes, oh, there's Yeah, I

want to talk about products, though. While we're on that subject, talk to us about what's available on the shelves. You know, I see these silica products, and you mentioned some of the newer ones, like power Si, mammoth Si, with this mono silicic acid. How does that differ from like the potassium silicates that I see on the shelf, all the different forms of silica that's on the Grow store shelves. Tell me about those.

Yeah, so potassium silicate, under the trade name usually comes as Agil 16. I think there's only one company in the whole country that manufactures it, pq Corporation. Yeah, it's PQ corporation. So Agil 16, first of all, I want people to understand that there's a difference between organic and organic certified. And then also, there's a difference between what organic is and natural. So like, you can have a salt like gypsum. Gypsum is considered a salt even though it's 100% natural. It's because it's a chemical chain, a positive start. Yeah, it's just because it's got a positive molecule and a native molecule attached together. So the positive recharge element is the calcium the negative is the sulfate. So Gypsum is calcium sulfate. It's totally natural. It can be used. It doesn't harm the it doesn't have a negative impact on the environment, when you're using it in your gardens and stuff like that. And axial is similar. So axial is actually created. They use sand, which is high in silica, and I think, pot ash, and they mix them up, and then heat them really high, and then they just combine together to hold the silica into like a basically a salt type of form, axil. 16 is water soluble. You can use it as a root drench. You can use it as a foiler spray. The thing is that axial 16 also contains 32% soluble potassium, and so you wouldn't want to just be mixing up axil 16 continuously and putting that into your soil system. You know, you wouldn't want to just water every time, Oh, I'm getting silicon in there because you're adding potassium. And well, potassium is a plant element. It can if you, if the percentage is too high, you're going to start locking out magnesium and calcium, right? You know? So you want to know how much you're supposed to be using. And so typically, if you're using it in a foil or spray type of application. You're not going to run into the types of antagonistic issues with soil elements, right? And so just using this at a rate of about half of a tablespoon to a tablespoon per gallon as a foiler spray, you're going to get the potassium, and it's going to plants going to love it, but you're also going to get that silica. And then the cool thing is, too the mode of action for the way, like axial potassium silica works, is a couple of things. So you get the benefits that we talked about, about the biotic and abiotic stress responses and all that other stuff. But because the Agil 16, when you put this in the solution, it's going to jack up that pH, and that pH and that solution is going to be probably about 10 or 11 pH, which is very, very alkaline. Now, as long as you're using clean water, we I think we've talked about water and water usage when we've talked about foiler sprays, but you want clean water, like reverse osmosis water or distilled water, you don't want a bunch of junk in your water that's going to antagonize the mineral elements that you're trying to deliver to that plant. So given that you're using clean water and you use axil 16 as a foiler application, you're going to get the benefit from the actual silica, available plant silica and the available plant potassium, right? You're going to get those right, which is the all the benefits that come with potassium, which is stomatal guard, cell regulation, better water transport, better nutrient allocation. It does a bunch of stuff, better enzyme production, a bunch of stuff that that potassium does, and then all the stuff we talked about, silica. But because of that pH change of that that solution, you can spray your plants with a 10 or 11 pH and what it's going to do is any type of pathogen that might be on the phylosphere of that plant are going to get wiped out because there's so many microorganisms that just can't operate in that high of a pH range. It's It's basically like if you were to spray baking soda or peroxide or something like that on your plant, as bacteria is not going to like that, yeah, just for like an IPM protocol. So this has the benefit of suppressing pathogens through both the the induction of the silicic acid response mechanisms. ISR uh acquired systemic resistance, and you're also going to get the nutrient benefits. And axle 16 is what completely water soluble. And so the silica that's in here is also water soluble. This is by far one of the least expensive forms of silica, right? And it is a great form of potassium. It as a standalone potassium amendment. It works wonderfully as well. It's not as it doesn't have high potassium content as something like potash or potassium sulfate, which is another unnatural element, but you can also use this and not bring in too much sulfur, right? So this is more for, like, flowers, right? Because I'll use, I'll use the, you know, potassium for to increase yields, because that's one of the things that it really helps and and because potassium and calcium are antagonistic, I'm front loading my calcium, and I'm using small doses of calcium through flowering, but once I get to week four or five, I switch over to the axle, so I'm still giving it the silica throughout flour, while still addressing the mineral elements that's needed. The calcium is another. This is a micronized one, so this is soluble in water, but it is still heavier than water, so you will want to make sure you have something mixing your tank if you're going to water it in for a root drench. But this is so great because you're getting all that calcium. You can front load calcium with it while addressing that silica. So you're getting the benefits of all those different things, plus the magnesium and iron that

are in and you're not pounding in the potassium as well. We're just doing

all amounts, you know, like half of a half of a tablespoon per gallon of water, you know, once a week, or once every other week, depending on how aggressive you're going on it. And so it's very cost effective. And look, check this out. Axil 16, like a pound of this cost maybe about 20 bucks. So this will last a long time, especially if you're using it as a foiler application. That is a great bargain, especially to to the home grower, because a lot of times, you know, you can, you don't need to buy a 50 pound bag of something. You can, you can get a, you know, most people, that's why I offer all these products in lower sizes so that it's cost effective for the homegrown and then this is only, like, a pound of this only cost maybe, like 10 bucks, the count the calcium, silica, that's beautiful. So they're cost effective. And then when you you are buying bulk, if you're like, going at scale in your commercial, these things come. Become really cost effective when you're buying in larger one, right,

right? You can probably get them bulk for dirt cheap. Literally, dirt cheap. But I try to explain this concept to growers all the time, especially new growers, because you can get a good recommendation, like, hey, my plant looks sick. Oh, it's deficient in this mineral. But you really need to look at the bottle that you're applying to solve that problem. This is a classic case with the Cal mags that are on the market, right, and some of them being very high in nitrogen. And then grower, you know, random grower X says, you know, oh, this is a magnesium deficiency or a calcium deficiency, may pour this on in week seven of flour, and he's adding like a four to 6% nitrogen to his flowering plant. It's the same thing you just said with potassium silicate. So it's a hard concept to break down to growers, but I guess basically, it's make sure that you're taking a look at what's attached to the mineral that you're feeding the plant, and then make sure that that attached mineral is also appropriate for the stage that you are in. For instance, the potassium silicate in flour, makes a lot of sense, because you're trying to up that potassium level, but maybe not earlier on. Is that a fair way to put it? You know what I mean? I try to make that idea concise. That's correct.

If we're looking at agronomy, we're always looking at timing and application. Where do I need to where do I need to put the fertilizer? What? What do I need to be putting and then, when do I need to be putting it there? Because, like you said, you don't want to be adding high nitrogen fertilizers late in the flowering cycle. So we're looking at the data, and we're only adding in what needs to be added from a single nutrient perspective, we're looking at nitrogen, and nitrogen is sufficient. We're not going to add anything that has nitrogen in there. We're if we're only looking at, you know, calcium, oh, calcium needs to be adjusted. Then the options that we have for calcium, which might be gyp, it might be calcium, silica, it might be bone meal, it might be any, any of those types of things, but we have to figure out which is the best for this particular situation, right?

And close to individually as possible. Like I say, I'm breaking it down individually. Yeah, that's one of my concerns with the all purpose fertilizers. Some of these slow release fertilizers are doing a really great job, and I think it's a great way to grow, but it's like we were alluding to earlier. These cultivars feed so differently sometimes. Is that something you've seen when you're taking a look at the leaf tissue and the SAP content and all this, do you see cultivars feeding vastly differently, or is it only slight differences?

It's usually slight differences, and that's why I've been able to maintain a certain type of target a baseline, yeah. And so what we're looking at is we're looking at these baseline targets, and we're maintaining these targets, and we're making sure that we have sufficiency and balance within a target range. Now you could be at the lower end of that range, or you might be at the higher end of that range, or you might have some combination of things that are in between. But typically it's these plants are going to fall within this range. And that can be said for other ag crops too, because a cherry tomato might have slightly different nutrition than, let's say, a purple Cherokee. You know, it just depends on the plant species themselves. But again, we're operating within a certain range. And so like, the way that I address that is, we look at our soil, and we bring the soil up to a certain target, and then if we have, when we do the like, our fertigation plans, like for humate fertilizers, for instance, like, we'll have a one part solution, but it's for a certain stage. So like the high nitrogen humate would be for vegetative and then the more even would be for when you're transitioning, or the plant is bolting. And then you have your third stage, which is like your your flowering and and and ripening, stage right? So we have solutions that are like, you know, nitrogen complex and then K, but we're really looking at two, you know, making sure that everything was balanced in the soil. And the humates are just kind of an afterthought to help with the production, you know, the production in these systems, because oftentimes in organics, we're really, really dependent on some biologically mediated processes that happen, especially between nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur, because nitrogen can be acquired from the atmosphere and It can also be denitrified and turned back into nitrogenous gas, and you'll lose that nitrogen from soil, right? And then Phosphorus has to be liberated from the parent appetite material. The Phosphorus has to be converted into the phosphate anion to be available, and that anion is so highly reactive. That it's only available for a short period of time, so it needs to be diffused through the root zone. Traditionally, the job of fungi, right in nature, yeah, that's usually the job of fungus and bacteria, or it could so it's basically microbial weathering of parent appetite material through enzymatic activity, or it's through environmental weathering, whether it's like maybe low pH rain, or like what they would call acidic rain, not acid, not raining acid, but rain that has a lower pH to it because it contains a higher amount of hydrogen, for instance. So those are some just things that are happening that are going to be mediated by biology, that are going to have a great impact on the overall production. And so being able to add in the humate with the humate fertilizer, which is addressing complete mineral nutrition and acting as a bio stimulant to help just bam, you know, really up things. That's why I'm using the humane in these organic systems. It's because all of these farms still need to reach these high yielding potentials to be able to stay in business. So it's just one of those. It's a it's additive. It's not necessary, because I know people that do really well without adding those things, but I like to use them, you know, yeah,

and you're looking at these cost effective methods, like you're skipping the EDTA, and you're finding ways to mimic that natural process, but speeding it up, making it more soluble, making it more individualized, more broken down, still within the natural processes. And

that's too we're highly dependent on microbial production of Sadia fours, which chelate all of those micronutrients. And you always see micronutrients chelated across the board, in in in conventional fertilizers. It's just because the highly reactive nature of those elements, you know, iron will oxidize and become an available plant so easily. But having the humate and having a carbon chelated version of all of that stuff that just, it just aids in the overall production value. You know, absolutely.

Can you talk about silica and using it as a pH up and building RO water from the ground up, you don't even buffer your RO water. Do you Brandon? Talk to me about building up our water and using silica.

No. So the reason why I had always pH my water was because I was, you know, I was taught doing hydroponics. Now what I do is I test water, and so we'll get a full analysis on the water itself. And what we'll be looking at is things like chloride, sodium levels, bicarbonate levels, levels of mineral elements. And as long as the water is clean, and what I mean by clean is that the levels are within or below an acceptable range, then I know that that that we're not going to have any issues using that type of water. Now, if the water is really dirty and we just go to RO water. There's nothing in that water. I don't have to worry so much, and so I can just use plain water. And whatever I'm adding into the system, the soil will actually buffer, because we're not feeding constantly, like in a hydroponic system, to where the media itself will, it'll, it'll basically drop down or scale to whatever pH level the solution is, right? Our solutions are only temporary when we're in these soil systems, because we have a certain soil pH, and it will actually buffer that. And so whatever it is, let's say the pH of the soil is 6.8 and we're putting in something that's about 6.0 now the temporary drop in pH might have a increase in availability of some of those elements that are better up taken at that pH, but it's only to be temporary, right? You know, because we have all of the cation exchange capacity that actually buffers that out. So as new ions are introduced into the system that might drop or acidify pH, what will end up happening is, as those are taken up, other ions that are attached to clay, colloids or the surfaces of organic matter, will actually defuse into the solution, and then it will, it'll increase that pH. So

thumb farmer is dealing with 380 ppm. He's got chloramine in his tap water, so he's gonna go to ro and what you're saying is, in a soil system, which I think thumb farmer is a syngenic grower, but in a soil system, you're not watering to run off. You're not having to flush that media, chase that media. Chase that pH.

And 350 PPM isn't necessarily a bad thing. The thing is, what is, what is that 350 PPM made up of? If it's made up of all salt, then, yeah, you're gonna need to do something about that. But if it's a, if it's a balance between, oh, I have a little bit of. Calcium, I have some magnesium, I have some sodium, I have a little bit of iron. So

it depends on what it is, is what you're saying, it's one thing, if it's just high in sulfur, right?

Yeah, or if it's if it's 300 ppm of sodium, then yeah, that's gonna fuck your system up, right? But if it's like, Oh, hey, it's only actually 15 ppm of sodium, it's 12 ppm of chloride and it's 20 ppm of bicarbonate, you're good to go. You know, those levels are not high enough that you're going to have to have issues. And then all the rest of those are plant available nutrients, and then that's so then that water contains an absolutely available plant ions. And what we would be doing is we just be looking at a soil test, right? Okay, so whenever you go and test your water, for me, how I do it is, we use the water that we're going to fertigate with, and you can get a soil test done with your water, and then that'll give you a better, accurate view, because you're adding elements to that soil, and then you're going to add less of it as a top dress, because you're getting it from your water. So we're like, balancing what's in the water with what needs to be put into the system. That's

good stuff, man. Including all of that in the data driven stuff, I like it. Mr. Erwin, can you overdose the plant with too much silica? What happens when there's too much silica in the system? Actually,

in one of these I was reading about, you know, over application, and it's one of the things is they haven't seen any instances when there's really too much,

it's one of those things that's really hard to overdose on. Is what you're saying.

The reason is, the reason is this because silica will, you can have tons of it, second, again, second most abundant element in the Earth's crust. So it's naturally, you know, in soils, it's about, how does it become available, right? So you have to have that microbial metabolism, again, microbial mediated enzymatic activity that is able to solubilize and transform the unavailable silica appetite material into a metabolically available form for the plant. And so I think that if you have an abundance of metabolically available silica in the plant, the plant will take it up. I think that what will happen, you'll see a spike in different types of organisms that could use that, and it's going to be used up as long as it's available. And then I think also, what would I'm no chemist, right, but I would assume that a lot of that would bond and create some type of, you know, different other types of compounds that that, you know, interact with other soil elements. You know, maybe it bonds with another, like some kind of carbon element, and creates a a new carbon compound in the soil that's just sitting there waiting to be broken down through microbial I don't know, through microbial metabolism. I know there's all different types of possibilities when it comes to the way that chemistry and biology work in these types of systems. So

Brandon, I want to talk about calcium before we wrap it up, because that was the other half of this. You know, calcil that we're looking at this this really, yeah, really effective way to apply both of these important minerals. Talk to us about calcium. You know, we've heard on this show before, people saying, Hey, this is a macronutrient. People who used to consider a micronutrient, but it's so consumed by the cannabis plant, you have to keep adding it. What else should we know as cannabis growers, as home growers and and what are we maybe looking at incorrectly when it comes to calcium in our cannabis gardens?

I mean, when I'm when I start off a new soil system, and we're like resetting for veg, we're resetting it up so calcium is two times the amount of nitrogen. So that speaks volumes as far as as far as macronutrient, and it is a macronutrient, especially for cannabis. And not only that, but 60 to 65% of the base solution. So 60 to 65% of what falls into solution when you're watering should be calcium. Jeez. I mean, I

didn't look at it as that much of a macro nutrient. That's, that's a huge portion that's,

that's in across almost all agronomy, though, right? We're looking at like a percentage. If we're looking at a percentage, typically 60% calcium, maybe 10 to 12% magnesium, MMA, two to depending on a crop, 8% potassium as a total percentage of what should be in this in the total soil, wow, as a nutrient percentage, like of your nutrients, not in total volume. Not,

yeah, not total volume. You grow. You're growing in seaweed powder.

Calcium is really important for cell structure, intracellular signaling, and it almost seems like the plant can't get enough of it. I've seen leaf tissue analysis almost at 9% total biomass, calcium, jeez. And the only issue is, if you're trying to push calcium that hard, you might be antagonizing things like magnesium and potassium, or you might be tying up phosphorus, right? But there's

no other like, massive issue, like, if you loaded too much nitrogen. And the planet kind of starts to fry and get all crazy,

yeah. I mean, that would, in that type of instance, if you, if you have too much nitrogen in your system, increasing your overall calcium percentages, or the ratio of nitrogen calcium will definitely help, because, again, we talked about these plant cells that are expanding with water, they're not going to be able to there's gonna be limp, dude. They're gonna be just shitty, stringy plants that don't can't hold their weight. You know that? And it doesn't matter if it's cannabis or corn or anything, too much nitrogen, not enough calcium, will do that. It's just a it's just a physiological effect of of that imbalance ratio.

Yeah, even in humans, man, you're all flimsy boned. You're like, boneless chicken from cow and chicken. So the calcium, though that's you can have that in incredibly high numbers. The plant just can't get enough of it, is what you're saying.

It seems that way in cannabis, at least, right? I have never seen a calcium toxicity like I've Have you ever in your life heard of, oh, that's calcium toxicity. You've only heard about deficiency. I've never seen it. I've never seen it, man, I've 8% Mendo boys, plants outdoors were like 8% I was like, Holy shit, my target is the high end of my target is like five and a half percent. Wow,

yeah, absolutely. Man, I totally agree. I mean, I'm no like, deficiency diagnosis specialist, but I've seen a lot of gardens, and I like to watch over the lovely Mary Beth Sanchez shoulder. And, yeah, I've never seen like, oh, you added what? That's why people had so much gypsum, I feel like, and like you said, the only problem with that is really the sulfur side, not the calcium side.

It's the sulfur side, and it's also the and, well, look, and that's another thing. Why these plants like sulfur too. Because we're really limited on the elements that are actually have a that are an anion have negative charge. So we're talking about sulfate, phosphate, nitrate, molybdenum and boron. I mean, that's not, that's not a lot. Those are the essential elements that have a negative charge. The the majority of everything else has a positive charge. And then molybdenum and boron are used in such small quantities that they're not going to be able to they're not going to be able to help that charge balance at all like because it's the the amount that it that is being uptake is negligible compared to your your major cations and negatively positively charged anion So, but the

calcium not really an issue with the toxicity, so much as you might lock out other things at those at those higher levels, it's not something that you see of calcium toxicity, unless you're, like, growing in bones or something bone dust, you're gonna run into other issues, basically. And

the issue too, is that, like, calcium isn't really mobile in plants like it needs, you need it in a high enough ratio, so it has it in stores. It where it's where it's growing, where all of the nutrient is, is going. Because it's not going to translocate, it's not going to pull it's not going to break down parts of itself and catabolize parts of itself like it can with nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium and magnesium, because you can train the plant can catabolize itself in the process releasing energy like it can catabolize amino acids to release nitrogen if it needs to translocate nitrogen to go to the top because it's not getting enough in solution, calcium doesn't do that. Calcium needs to be has it needs to have enough to supplement its immediate needs, or else that plant is going to have the structure and rigidity that it needs to be able to hold up it's under its own weight, or to be able to survive the stressful environmental conditions.

So again, it's not this thing that's going to like, travel through your plant and be mobile and, you know, fry it up. It's going to just store, store in the cell walls, have an adequate amount within the plant.

But And also another thing too, is when we're looking at the size of these molecules. So potassium is the largest of the cations, followed by calcium, magnesium, sodium and some other ones, right? Those are the the major ones. Potassium is a it regulates the guard cells on the stomatal opening, so that potassium is responsible for water movement and trans transportation, right? Calcium will actually drag other molecules behind it too, though, well, it's being uptaken. Now I the way I see it in my mind is like, if you have wake from a boat and you catch that certain area of that boat's wake, it'll drag you along with it. And calcium has big molecules taking other things behind it, so it acts as a mediator for the uptake of other other

elements. On that note, we've got a few member questions here, but the flying brand Dino is asking, what is your favorite potassium amendment for soil, a natural amendment, not a watered in nutrient, but something to add to the soil for potassium.

So there's only a couple. I actually use potassium sulfate, maxil 16 and the RE or sunflower whole ash. The reason why the they're limited, the options are really limited, is because, when we're talking about potassium as micronutrient, the amount that we need to bring. Into the system is usually, you know, a cup or maybe a cup and a half per yard of soil. Maybe it's less, depending if you're already sufficient, but we're bringing in a lot of it, typically more than other nutrients, and so we need to have the the k value, the percentage of potassium in that appetite material, be high enough that we're not having to apply massive quantities, right? Because we want it. We want to put the least amount into the system as we can, but have that least amount have the highest quantity. So if we're looking at a water soluble potassium sulfate, we're looking at 00, 52 it's got nothing else in it except 52% of that material is potassium. So we can put less of it in there because it has a higher percentage of active ingredient. The same thing with axial 16, axle 16, it doesn't have the sulfur associated with the potassium sulfate. So I like to use that. It is kind of my go to because I can keep sulfur low or the sulfate low, and I still have 32% 00, 32 on the Ag cell. So I'll have to use 1.5 times the amount that I would for the potassium sulfate, because it has a lower percentage of active ingredient. So I'll have to actually use more axial 16, and it's more expensive. So overall, if I'm using axial 16, it's more expensive to the pocketbook, but I'm mitigating some other issues while addressing silica,

yep, taking care of that silica load. But to a home grower, it's, it's, you know, comparing bananas to bananas here, I liked what you said, though, the sunflower whole ash, I had not heard of that. I've heard of, like, palm bunch ash and stuff like that. But basically, like these natural sources of

of ash, yeah, so we're taking recycled green waste, and there's different ways to process it, whether it's being turning it into ash, or whether you would do a solid state fermentation to do bio, uh, bio fertilizers. But that Ash contains about 1% nitrogen, half a percent phosphorus, and then 20% that's so cool. So again, use, you're going to have to use probably 2.2 times the amount that you would of water, soil, potassium sulfate, because 00, 52 on the, on the, on the K sulfate, versus 20% on the whole ash. So you're gonna have to use more of it to get to sufficiency. But if it's twice as if it costs, you know, half, you know, twice, yeah, then you're gonna be all right,

you know, yeah, very natural source. Yeah, good question. Flying brandina, the

sunflower. Whole Ash is gonna have a lot of calcium in it as well. Okay,

listen, let's wrap this up. We have a few more questions, and then we will let Brandon get on with his day. Here. What do you recommend for home soil testing? Brandon for, like, a home grower.

So if you really want to get into it, and you are a hobbyist grower, but you're like, I want to learn about single mineral amendments, I want to, like, really do stuff, because I know that the process can be just as fun as the end result the and I know that some people really like that. I have a guy here who he loves the mixing stuff up. He loves to do like, all of the stuff he doesn't like. Some people don't have time for it. They just want, hey, I'm gonna plant soil, give it some water. Simple thing, and I don't have to pay much attention to it, but for all the people that are like me and love the science and want to do stuff, go and spend $55 and get a home test from Logan labs, or get a test from Logan labs, it's a professional test. It's a complete test and a saturated pace test. It gives you a standard soil and then also shows you, like, all of what is falling into solution. So basically, what your nutrient mix is would be when you're watering your plant, and what it all is available in available form. And I actually give recommendations, and I work with people, and I show them, like, what's going on and how things work. And again, it's may not be super cost effective if you're just if you're on a real tight budget and you're just a small home grower, but if you're wanting to learn, that is the best way to do it. And then there's some books. There's a book called by Bill McKibben. He exclusively uses Logan labs, and his book is based off of all the data he collects there. It's called soil nutrient dynamics. And I'll send you a picture of that so you can share that and it show it just talks about the solar economy side. It talks about carbon and, you know, the chemical analysis, everything that goes along with it. So

when we get recommendations from Logan labs soil test, it's we just follow their recommendations, and that's it that easy? Or do we need to run it? Run it by someone like you and say, Hey, we're growing cannabis. You understand what I'm saying?

They do some recommendations, but mostly for like ag crops like corn and soy. They're not experts in cannabis by any means. And so usually people that are looking for that go to people like myself, got you

got. Yeah, that's why I wanted to clarify, you know, because what targets are we shooting for here? Yeah,

like you could get, you could bring your your soil this efficiency, and then run a couple of runs and just basically do small amounts of minerals and stuff like, you can play around, and then just every couple of runs, you could test just to see where you're at, make sure you're in balance, make sure you don't need to flush, or make sure nothing's built up too high. So there's different ways to approach it. It's not like you need to do it consistently. You could do it once or twice a year even, right? It just depends on how, how involved and in depth you want to go. Okay? So

there you go. Logan, labs, everybody need to get a discount code for them or something. We got some more people typing here in the chat. Brandon, real quick before we go, what can you tell us about Bucha earth works? What's on the horizon? Anything you can tease here on growcast.

So we have all the products, the micro plus, that's actually on sale right now. We have the cold press tiaha. We have the Smart Carbon you can make fertilizers. We obviously have ag sale, calcium, amino acids. Those are the main products. We also have all the micronutrients. If someone wanted to build soil or, you know, do what I do. But this is the big thing. This is coming up next. This is the Nutri gro pot. It's a compostable, fully integrated system that delivers fertilizer, nutrition, carbon right to the root zone. It's a replacement for single use plastics and for starter fertilizers. And hopefully, with my business partners at NASA agricultural technologies, we're going to be building the manufacturing to construct these cups here in Oklahoma City. It's cool, and that'll be a huge part of our business as we know, this thing into a multi million dollar business.

Man, that is so freaking cool. It's a very unique product. I love to see it. I love the innovation. Final question Blitzen is asking, Will you ever release your bull rider cross? We should probably do a whole breeder feature. Brandon, we always talk about nutrients, but talk to me about this bull rider cross before we do a whole episode.

I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do the Afghani bull rider reversal, and then I'm also, I already took it to the black lime reserve, and I'm going to take it to the black lime reserve again, the same exact parents to increase the seeds. But I haven't even announced anything. You guys are the first to hear anything about that. There's only one other person that has Afghan bull right across the black lime reserve, and that is skunk tech. He came visit me last week. That's on the horizon. I

love it, man. I love it. Thank you for that. And we'll get you back on to talk about all of the expressions of all those strains. I

appreciate you having me on. And you guys can all go to the website, check out the products, and I think you might even have a link that I built you a link before, didn't I? We'll put a

link up in the discord for sure, and then I'll blast it out as well. We'll get you that discount. Everybody, Bokashi earthworks.com Bokashi earthworks.com. Is where you can find it. Brandon, we'll let you go. Thank you so much, man. We appreciate you. I'll talk to you guys soon. All right, take care. Bye. Brandon rust, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. Dear listener. I appreciate you. We'll see you next time, everybody. This is Brandon rust and Jordan River, signing off, saying, Be safe out there and grow smarter. That's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. I appreciate each and every one of you, and thank you to Brandon rust as well for being today's guest. Before we wrap it up, I urge you to check out membership at growcast podcast.com/membership. You'll find archives of this show, hundreds of hours of growcast TV, our web show, plus access to us personally, through the discord, through the Ask Me Anything, live streams and so much more. We've got a couple of classes coming up. Members get 25% off our classes. We are in Tampa September 9 for the flavor farm. That is a terpene tasting experience. No class like it, a night of tasting flowers and tasting food and learning about terpene September 9 in Tampa, and then September 16 and 17th in Virginia, we got the greeter workshop. Find it all at growcast podcast.com/classes members getting 25% off all our classes. That's right. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you're doing amazing things in your garden. I hope you're staying safe out there. Don't be afraid to tell a friend about grow cast. I appreciate you for tuning in. Dear listener. See you next time bye bye.

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