I would describe firefang as a myccorrhiza growth that has died and shrunk back onto the manure or material it's growing on, often times it is baked on if it came from a pile. Myccorrhiza's contributions to other growing entities are renown, and I can imagine that their prescence provides a visual increase in horticultural health, especially in culturing where other microorganisms are forbidden. Even if the myccorrhiza were to remain as remains, never to live on that particular turd again, it would be a source of rich meat for a canniballistic psilly cousin, literally an instantly available repostitory of mycellium building blocks.
anyway-
I have seen many white strands stretching from one piece of manure to another in active growth and the conditions for it's growth seem to be adequate moisture levels and 75-90/F heat.
So, I think that if we want to create lots of firefang then we need to build and handle our piles accordingly.
The center of a fresh, classic (
got yer browns and greens proportioned?) compost pile is going to get about 150/F. Too hot for our purposes. And yes, 150/F is supposed to kill weed seeds and ideally speaking, ok, but in practice, no, it hasn't worked for me.
So keep the pile warm and not hot by keeping it medium to smaller. Covering it and uncovering it can help regulate the temperature also. Covering manure discourages the release of it's nitrogen and carbon as well. FYI-A layer of just two inches of dirt will accomplish their preservation.
Hydrate the pile as needed but don't soak it. We want the consistancy of a barely wrung out sponge.
Fortify your pile with amendments and additives if you like, these will begin to be distributed and processed right in the pile if the micro workers are on the job.
I think the firefang probably lives in the soil. Innoculating your pile with active garden soil does transfer zillions of micro workers to your (re)construction site even if it doesn't transfer firefang.
I wonder if there is benefit in innoculating a pile with the psilly herself so as to provide custom infrastructure building blocks for our flushes to come.
Re the heat encouraging microbial activity: yes and no, the microbes which benefit our plants need at least 50/F to operate but 150/F kills them in minutes.
Microbial activities and their corporeal substances are what makes the difference between compost and manure.They are in the yogurt and the yeast. You can kick start a pile by pouring a beer on it as well. Large populations are in the
urine but much of that is generally
voided by inadequate preservation
facilities. Bacteria are busy boyz and they make cow patties into micro burgers in no time. Microbes can colonize the substrate of manure at a rapid rate and according to
Dr. Hulbert, discounting death, one microbe would enable a mass of generational offspring equal in size to the Earth in 24hrs. This is equal to the human growth curve from it's origin til now. (he's got a chart and everything, you can even see bacteria grow in a time lapse)
anyway~
Not only do the wastes and corpses of microbes make great baby food for our plants but the microbes (like myccorrhiza) are also quite happy to participate in other synergistic relationships with plants. Microbes exchange many materials with plants in the root zone.
*gets up on soapbox*
The possiblity exists that many secondary psychoactive compounds are formatted by or fortified by the trace nutrients offered up by these traditional microbial root attendants.
*stands on tippy toes on soapbox*
Microbes are obviously one of the most likely catalysts to inspire any evolutionary advances regarding the formation of active compounds in flora.
Is sterilization really all that necessary in mycoculture?
i think i shall be rejecting this rejection of our microhelpers on the grounds of Darwin's respect for God
{the thought of god being a product of evolution seems quite possible to me, he didn't make it in 2000 but he might be here yet...}
Long live micro macro cultivation~~~~~
manure
ya got the Ma, which is good
and the Newer, which is also good-
Well, as
Freakachino pointed out, and what points they are girl, you gave me an *ardon and i ain't even got one to get *ard..
ok, what you put into it is-
hey, puddin, do you want a candy cane?
yup, what we put into them is what we can expect out of them
*cough*
If you feed your animals sweet feed then sweet feed is what you will get out of them. Mineral rich grass will yield mineral rich poopoo.
potash, N or carbs- it seems to apply to all of it
We can actually guess the fert value of our sweet dung if we know the content of the sweet feed we are putting out.
80% of the nutrients ingested by milk cows will be excreted
90% by fattening cattle or hogs
age, health, products produced will affect this figure slightly
Species also affects it.
The average content of manure is 1.5% each of N-P and K.
(.5% in fresh, due to water content)
These nutrients are not all excreted in the solid dung.
dung contains 1/3 the nitrogen
and the urine has the other 2/3's
dung has 1/5 the total potash and nearly all of the phosphoric acid
urine has 4/5's the potash and hardly any phosphorus
Using rotted manure for it's texture is an admired technique in my gardening book and they agree horses are the
shit but they also
highly recommend sheep manure for it's dryness and rich quality. There are averages to manure quality of course but there are also extremes.
Sheep leave the highest level of potash
behind in the barnyard and you know what else they say about their behinds... The potash in a sheep's manure is a 1/3 more than that in a horse's and twice that of steers.
Rabbits win the N race though, and by way more than their nose. Rabbit pellets have more than 3x the N that horse manure has and twice the N of birds.
If you like the idea of rotted manure but hate to give up all of those prerot nutes, then maybe fortification with manure tea is called for.
>tailor make your con
coctions and send them to
freakachino@damnaintshefine.yea
So Honeybees, you do have some control over what sweetner your manure tea has in it.
Want N? use fresh manure to make the tea, preferably with the urine intact, or you could have a pee party of your own and water your psychonaughts with some of your personal essences. Let them get to know their friend and future host.
like i said tho,
Nitrogen is most water soluable in fresh manure.
Want potassium or phosphorus?
K and P are most water soluable in rotted manure;
harvest them for use from the more demure manure.
now distill to desired strengxh and apply to growing medium.
Remember what the doormouse
kachino said, what you give them is what they'll have to give you back. Actually, this is a commonly acknowledged standard when it comes to the vitamin and protein content of vegetables; the food that plants receive is directly correlated to their final nutritional value for humans. What degree couldn't this apply to when it comes to the magic powers packed into the medicine bags of our psilly sages?
feed their heads~!
The experimentation with substrates documented within this website is quite impressive. Beesides the investigation of entirely liquid cultures, there also appears to be room for experimentation with substrates comprised of the widest variety of relevant fertilizers possible.
example:
I read that potassium is highly involved in the production of sugars in cannabis and since I also read that sugars are supposedly what THC is made from, I will be adding exotic clays to my soil mix. diversity is good and bouquets are meaningful, not to mention my pet evolutionary catalyst theory.
There might be great
Headwaz to be gained from opening up the thought of closed pit composting. This CO2 rich, semi-anaerobic environment creates many valuable nutrients and can eliminate all pathogens with enough time.
*offers soapbox to mycologists*
Building immunities seems pretty important in the fungal arena. If an army of psilly warriors were to be unleashed in a closed pit compost coliseum, would any of Darwin's proteges triumph? Would an immune survivor remain? How about any of Psilly's records of the battle, are they usable?
(DNA? damn i wish i knew stuff sometimes)
Even without the stardust aspect you still have the poor man's way to utilize the classic approach to immunizations; feed corpses of the pathogen to the patient so templates can be manufactured and are in place in case of exposure to real live dangerous germs.
Innoculating the pit with the "appropriate" germs might be of benefit in this pursuit. Their delecti remains could be delicious death denying doses to our Sage.
Anaerobic compost tea is a hippy favorite. I almost laughed when i heard it was supposed to buried underground in a bull's horn for three months but I know better than to doubt the value of Uncle Steve's advice now.
For anyone interested in pathogen combat, remember that sometimes there are small differences that allow the survival of one organism and the demise of another. Finding even a small difference in the survival requirements between host and invader can end the battle.
Perhaps the disease is not active below X temperatures but the host can hibernate quite comfortably at X while waiting for the disease to die.
factors i know of- moisture, pH, salt, light, temperature, nutrients and Time
Does this crap interest you?
if so, then my advice to you is - Keep notes and experiment.
About everything you have time for.
example:
This cross checked notation about fert tendencies is quite a valuable rule of thumb if you're thinking about kicking up the ppm's.
~~~
Applying manure to spent fields will double the field's crop output.
Application of manure is
2 tons of poultry manure per acre.
But applying 4 tons yields only 2% more....
To double the 2 ton yield, you must apply
8 tons of manure.
Now the field is saturated and not even the application of 10-10-10 will increase the harvest.
~~~
This experiment took five years and that's a long time to remember how many bushels were pulled off just one of your fields. Especially since you probably have multiple investigations going on at all times. Who would have thought to keep track of how much output a spent field puts out? but control groups are very important...
Lots of notes become valuable for suprising reasons so do not slack on the details. Seemingly simple shorthand has become indecipherable to me just a few years later so don't slack the details and spell it out if you can make time.
moral of the story~
everybody has the magic and adds something to it
isn't that some sweet shit?
