After searching for like a decade (maybe a bit more) I finally got my hands on a salvia plant. She's around 35cm tall, but with really long internodal spacing (~7cm at most). As you can see in the photos she got really stressed during transport. Her previous habitat was in a dark headshop. 2 days and a few of countries later she experienced strong winds, temperature and humidity shocks, and had the bottom of the pot covered in a wet tissue paper while her topsoil was still quite moist. From my initial observations the soil sucks, was kept too wet, and she's most likely quite rootbound. I cut off the leaves that were beyond saving, but I didn't go too overboard so I don't stress her out too much.
What concerns me the most is that the plant shows some pest damage (showed in the photos), and while examining the plant I found a single tiny red/dark orange bodied bug. It was smaller than a pinhead, but moving quite quickly. I killed it immediately because I wasn't sure if it's some beneficial like a persimilis or just some red bodied mite. I looked over the rest of the plant, but couldn't find any more of them. Should I spray the plant with neem oil, and if so what mix do you suggest? I had some issues in the past with neem/soap burning the leaves, so I don't want to kill her by trying to protect her.
She's currently residing inside of my 0.2m2 spacebucket. So far the temps ranged between 18.8C and 23.1C, so within her optimal range, but the humidity is around 30%(+-1%). That will improve for sure once she's in a much larger pot. Should I mist her in the meanwhile and how often? I lowered the light output to 2x 13w 1521lm 4000k led bulbs that point towards the sides of the bucket instead of towards the plant. When she's acclimatised I'm planning on slowly increasing that until she shows signs of light stress. Does anyone have an idea how much lights is too much?
Because of the tiny pot and shitty soil I'm planning on up poting her as soon as she stabilizes (should i do it sooner?). I've got a lot of leftover soil I used last summer to grow a tomato plant. It's a mix of pretty decent soil, castings, and pumice. Prior to planting the tomato I added a lot of green plant material (because the soil was low on N), dried nettle, dried comfrey leaves and roots, alfalfa pellets, and mineral dust (mostly marble dust). While the tomato was growing it constantly had some kind of mulch from local dynamic accumulators and FFJ plants (fast growing, resistant, high in N,etc.). Unfortunately the tomato was hit by insane spider mite infestations on a regular basis and didn't really produce all that much, but it's vegetative growth was pretty nice despite that. It also had plenty of red wigglers, but I think they got eaten by a family of centipedes that grew up in my soil. I watered it frequently with aerated teas consisting of humic acid, a bit of soil/castings, alfalfa pellets, molasses, and a mix of some shitty EMs (compared to what Americans have available at least). Soil PH (just tested with demineralized water, soil, and PH strips) is just a tad bit over 6, but definitely below 6.5, so it seems I won't have to add anything to lower it. I'll probably add a bit of castings to reintroduce microbes and hopefully wrigglers (got them the last time i bought the same castings).
So that soil should be a pretty decent starting point. The issue I'm facing is deciding whether to use a smaller pot that fits inside the bucket, or to just fill the bottom bucket with like 70l of soil and call it a day. The second option seems optimal because it's recommended to use at least 20gal pots for notill (even though some people managed to use 5gal pots without wrigglers) since it allows for constant cycling of nutrients from organic sources. That advice is for MJ, so a less hungry plant might thrive in less soil, but I'm a noob so no experience there. The downside is that she'll be severely limited in how high she can grow. Each bucket is 32cm tall and they're stacked on top of eachother, so if I were to fill up the bottom one with soil I'll be left with around 32cm of growing space, but when you take out like 4cm due to bulbs peeking in, and a couple more cm where the light is too strong I wouldn't be left with all that much height to work with. The obvious solution would be to LST it so it spreads out over the entire 0.2m2 and then take cuttings when she grows too tall. I can also make it higher in a few different ways if it becomes a problem, but it looks ghetto as fuck. How are your experiences with salvia LST? I've seen some people had quite decent results, but other people say she doesn't like to be told how to grow. It might not be an issue in the end since I'm also thinking about making some ghetto tent with styrofoam to grow some other low light plants in the future.
While transplanting her I'd also like to add some mycorrhiza since a lot of people report she responds quite well to it. The issue is I've only got access to Rhizophagus irregularis (formerly Glomus intraradices) spores. Do you know if that species is compatible with salvia? I'm currently kind of low on cash so I'd rather buy something like liquid kelp fert instead of experimenting with possibly incompatible and quite expensive myco.
While we're on the topic of kelp, I'd like to use both it, and alfalfa mulch. They're not only great resources of N, but also have some amazing (and different) veg growth hormones. I've seen some insane results when using alfalfa mulch so that seems amazing for a leaf crop. For example some guy I chatted with a while ago sent me a photo of a canna fan leaf he grew while experimenting with alfalfa. That thing was wider than both of his palms (easily over 20cm). Does anyone have experience with these inputs? Or any of the other standard mulch plants like malted barley, malted anything, nettle, etc.?
Has anyone tried adding LABs to the soil or as a foliar?
Later in the year I'll make some FFJ, OHN, IMO, and maybe some other inputs. Does anyone have experience with using these inputs on a salvia?
Finally, I'm thinking about taking cuttings when she's transplanted and acclimatized. I'm thinking about taking off those stems with too long internodal spacing so she becomes shorter and more bushy. Does that sound sensible? Also, I'd like to experiment with those clones and have them in pure coco and maybe coco/perlite to compare the results. Does she need a veg ratio fert (high N, lower PK) or a balanced fert?
Edited by Haski (02/27/20 09:37 AM)
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