All Answers

There are three major types of KNF Food based on which part of the plant is fermented.

1. Growth Tips – Best during the vegetative growth phase
2. Flowers or Unripe Fruits – Best during the puberty growth phase
3. Ripe Fruits – Best during the maturing and ripening growth phases

Mushrooms can be prepared either following the KNF Food or the KNF Medicine recipe with great benefit. Doing a Food recipe will result in a water based extraction, and following the Medicine recipe will result in an alcohol based extraction. Both have pros and cons and will extract different compounds from the mushrooms and will also have different delivery methods upon the metabolizing recipient.

You are edging into the verge of unstudied (or at least unpublished) territory, so you are becoming a true scientist that will have to create hypotheses, experiment, document, and repeat. If you were in a university, perhaps you could publish and gain some fanfare and accolades!

If you are just a humble farmer, you will know more and stay humble, and share with those that are worthy.

Personally, I think this will be the future of most pharmacopeia in the post synthetic (oil based) world. It was in the past, so it shall be in the future.

The pile finally heated up. I think low moisture was the issue.  I didn’t soak the wood chips, which I’ll do next time.   I’m making a batch of IMO4 with this batch of IMO3; I soaked the materials better and I’m having better results.

Yes, fermented sea water can be given to livestock. Do not give it if it is clumpy or smells rotten.

I’m having the same issue in Colorado in mid-April.  It’s been 36hours and it’s not heating up.  For the record, I used 50lbs of rolled oats and wood shavings with the IMO3 liquids per the manual (2x different IMO2’s).  The pile is outside on dirt and covered with feed bags.   It’s been mid 60’s during the day and mid 40’s at night; there’s a cold spell coming with some rain. I’ll cover the pile with a tarp if it rains.  I’ll give it a few more day snd then give it more water to see if i can get it to heat up.

Azolla is a water based fern. One thing I have noticed about it is that it will put a little droplet of water above it to act as a lens to concentrate sunlight and will also use its deep roots in the water below to handle the extra heat as a cooling system, which I surmise is how it is able to grow so quickly.

Most azolla will just grow great with fish in the pond below that will create manure in a sort of aquaponics type of situation, but the fish can also nibble on its roots which can slow growth. So if you want to grow without fish then I suggest adding the Leaf Formula to the water on a weekly basis. This can be much more dilute than the usual ratios used for plants as it will float around and encourage other water-borne biology to thrive which will also create nutrients for the azolla.

The key is to get a diverse and healthy biome thriving in the water, and the azolla will convert sunlight into nutrients and the biology will make other things and get a positive feedback loop going. So, when you harvest, I recommend only taking 1/3 of the azolla at a time so as not to upset this loop once you get it going.

As for resources, I will refer you to texts by Paul Stammets.

As for what most folks want to accomplish is to have maximum yield when growing mushrooms, so sterilization of some sort is necessary to eliminate any competition for nutrients/space that will be consumed by other species other than the one desired.

I’m not sure if there is any evidence that mushrooms are more nutritious, abundant, or grow faster with other species/organisms competing for the same resources, but if this is a concern, then it is probably better to wild harvest than trying to create similar situations in artificial conditions beside their natural habitat?

I don’t think there is any way to hack the dilution ratios as recommended, otherwise that would be the recommended application/dilution rate. We are always converging toward easiness and effectiveness.

The reason for this is that the water has to do with the absorption to dilution ratios. It’s like saying that we could make gatoraide twice as potent and it would still be effective cause you could drink half as much. Yeah, not so much. You would find it way too salty and not nearly as hydrating in its effect. Similar situation here.

Also, with spraying 25gal/acre is a light mist. In practice it really covers the plants very well with no drips. At application rates below that, there will be difficulty getting the solution to maximize the surface area available for absorption.

Another way to think about this is “can i just double the nutrient density of my food and eat half as much?”. Probably not, because your intestines and digestive system can only get so much out of the food through the digestive process, and most likely you will be taking big dumps with a lot of extra nutrients in there, and no perceivable benefit to yourself besides you are still hungry. Though this does not quite really apply because our current commercially available food is much lower below the natural nutrient density per volume, so some benefit probably would be realized by concentrating more nutrient density at this point. However realize that the KNF solutions are already concentrated, so not diluting them is not nearly as analogous in this example. ie. concentrating a concentrate vs concentrating a dilute.

Thanks, man..!!   You’re a lifesaver 🛟