All Answers

This is something I have never looked at. I know once the KNF Solutions are diluted, there is enough water that it will not inhibit the LAB.

Often times I make a concentrated maintenance mix containing KNF Medicine, KNF Cleanser, and KNF Food, and though sometimes it may be tempting to put LAB into that mix, it is not a good idea in the concentrated form, but once I dilute this mix 20ml/gal, THEN I add the LAB.

I just had the pleasure to go to one of Drake’s workshops and asked him a very similar question. When collecting in a desert it helps to apply the maintenance solution on and around the collection area 3 days before you begin the IMO collection. Water the collection area in the evenings or mornings during this 3 day period.

Maintenance Solution (1 Gallon of water):

OHN (medicine)  :  4ml

BRV (Stimulator) : 8ml

FPJ  (Food)            : 8ml

Fall is a good time to collect in the desert, but it won’t hurt to get a summer collection to :). Also planning your collection around retrieving your collection during the full moon is beneficial. The moon’s gravitational pull pulls the ground water higher, helping the topsoil to have more moisture.

Healthy broad leaf trees with the leaves accumulated beneath are a good place to collect from.

• Push the leaves aside until you get to the native soil.
• Line the native soil with the leaf litter or the broken down leaves. Or anything thing that has mycelium growth.
• Place Collection box on top and leaf litter and cover with surrounding leaf litter and leaves.

You are correct on the FPJ. One thing to keep in mind is to keep plants separated into their own batch. If you want to apply two or more FPJs to a crop you would want to mix after the ferment.

I’ve had the same issue finding BRV up in Oregon as well. You can make Makgeolli and let in turn to vinegar with or without a mother, or fruit vinegar will work as well. I have been using apply cider vinegar. You can also make vinegar from FPJ waste product. Chris Trump has a How to video.

How to: Vinegar with Chris Trump

This was an area of confusion for me as well. I asked a similar question here once and Drake replied, instructing me to mix up the rest of your solution, and then basically add 1 gram of salt for every liter of solution. Apparently that makes for a pretty accurate replication.

JADAM has copyright on some certain terminology, though the recipes are free and open source and so old that they are impossible to patent, so to avoid the wrath of that terrible organization, KNF Support has chosen to call these solutions Ultra Low Cost or ULC for short.

The ULC KNF Pest Solutions all fall into the list of OMRI approved materials that can be used for organic practices in the United States of America Inc. You will have to check with your individual certifier once you start mixing things.

In terms of a spray that can be used preemptively to discourage pests without damaging your plant and at the same time staying organic, yes, what you are looking for is to mix ULC KNF Pest Solutions.

There is a way to make Ultra Low Cost liquid soap at home, or a bottle of Dr. Bronners will also work, then this is blended with a concentrated herb solution.

To make the concentrated herb solution, you want to look for a plant that grows in your area that no bugs eat. In my case I use wadelia, but other recommended plants are ginkgo or jarusalem artichoke leaves. Gather a bunch of material and stuff it into a pressure cooker, then fill it half way with water and turn it on for a couple hours until the water reduces down to about a 1/4 and becomes very dark in color.

The key then is to blend these herbs with the soap and apply all over the leaves surface making the plant very unpalatable to insects.

The ratios to combine with water are
1:100 for the concentrated herbs and
1:170 for the soap.

or in other words, if I have 1 liter of water, put in 10mL of concentrated herbs and 6mL of soap.

The key to long term storage with KNF Food (which contain both FFJ and FPJ in the old vocabulary) and KNF Police (LAB) is to tie up the water through a process called supersaturation thus arresting the fermentation.

Supersaturation in KNF means that every water molecule is bound with a sugar molecule, and when the microbes try to continue to ferment the solution and thereby degrading it, they instead hibernate because they can not obtain water without obtaining sugar which further dehydrates them.

KNF Police will require equal volumes of brown sugar, so 1 liter of solution will need 1 liter of brown sugar. Volume of irregular solids can be easily measured using Archimedes Method.

Supersaturating KNF Food is a different story as the sugar content of the poured off solution will vary. To be absolutely safe, add equal volume as with KNF Police, but to be economical and not to waste sugar, add the sugar slowly and stir thoroughly. When you are approaching supersaturation the sugar will begin to float like an iceberg on the top of the liquid, and if using a wooden spoon to stir with sufficient volumes the spoon will begin to float. These signs indicate you are close, so in practice a bit more sugar is added to slightly over saturate the solution.

Over saturation will result in a ring of sugar falling out of solution no matter how much you stir it, and it is best to slightly over saturate to ensure that you definitely supersaturate for optimal preservation.

A supersaturated solution will store for many years.

In the case of a KNF Food that is made from the growing tips, the hormones, enzymes and metabolites that are so vital to growth will begin to break down after one year and should at that point be considered more of a KNF Food made from fruits when used in KNF Application Theory.

KNF Food made from fruits will get better over time and will store indefinitely at 1 celsius.

KNF Police will store for 3 months to a year at room temperature, but is best to use within the 3 month window as they are very aggressive microbes and even supersaturating them will not arrest them for long.

KNF Medicine stored out of sunlight and around 1 celsius with a airtight lid will last millenia, and in fact will improve over time just like a fine whiskey. The particles micronize as it ages and it’s effects becomes more potent as they are more readily absorbable upon metabolization, thus an aged KNF Medicine can be reduced by half when formulating for every year of storage.

It is recommended to store each KNF Medicine component separately to facilitate this micronization and only combine the 5 herbs together for the volume you will be needing for that month’s use.