Bird bones are not recommended because of their frailty. By the time they are properly charred, they tend to burn and turn to ash, which is not what you want. There may also be chemical differences, but I do not have scientific confirmation of that. I have talked about the use of bird bones for KNF Structure on the Office Hours at the 43 minute mark of this episode.
- drake answered 2 months ago
To get the trichoderma under control in this situation, I recommend using KNF Protectors. The broad family lactic acid bacteria are adept at helping to control other pathogenic biology that gets out of control. In this case, you could dilute the KNF Protectors at around 1:100 (about 10x stronger than normally recommended) to ensure that you get a lot of them in there to correct this problem. Also including the other standard KNF Solutions recommended in the Soil Preparation Formula is also a good idea.
Another more radical approach is to use concentrated vinegar. Like a 30% concentrate sprayed in there will definitely kill most everything, but could also burn things, so I’m not recommending this, but perhaps look into it.
- drake answered 2 months ago
Understanding the Nutrient Cycle Theory is very crop dependent, as apples are different than pears or persimmons, so knowing exactly what you are growing and then tuning the theory specifically to your climate is essential, and you will get better season after season as you practice and learn.
In general, you can use the Maintenance Formula, which is composed of Food, Cleanser, Medicine, and Structure all the time to great benefit.
To get more specific, I can share what Master Cho recommends for each crop individually, though because I am in the tropics, I probably will not have personal experience with the same crops.
- drake answered 2 months ago
The solutions you mention of Medicine, Cleanser, and Protectors sound like a good short term solution to controlling any infection that is in the tree.
In the long run, Foundation IMO is your best bet. Mix a bit of that with some oatmeal gruel to make it sticky and make a sort of poultice and smear it on the wounds to help them heal. Master Cho talks about healing trees in this video toward the beginning, even though the video is about collecting IMO, he gets side tracked by the health of the tree and talks about that instead.
- drake answered 2 months ago
The idea is to get the sun to go over the chicken house so a beam of sunlight will come through the split roof to go across the floor each day. In the Advanced Chicken Workshop by Master Cho, he explains the building design in the first lecture of the playlist.
Also, Master Cho’s Slides on Chickens may be a helpful resource as well.
- drake answered 2 months ago
I just looked up kefir on wikipedia, and it says that “The kefir grains initiating the fermentation are initially created by auto-aggregations of Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens and Kazachstania turicensis, where multiple biofilm producers cause the surfaces to adhere which form a three dimensional microcolony.”
So, it looks like kefir has lacto in it, albeit maybe a more narrow family than the KNF recipe would culture?
Further down the wikipedia article it says “A complex and highly variable symbiotic community can be found in these grains, which can include acetic acid bacteria (such as A. aceti and A. rasens), yeasts (such as Candida kefyr and S. cerevisiae) and a number of Lactobacillus species, such as L. parakefiri, L. kefiranofaciens (and subsp. kefirgranum[20]), L. kefiri,[21] etc.[9] While some microbes predominate, Lactobacillus species are always present.”
Which sort of validates what I was saying, but then with kefir it looks like you are also getting KNF Cleanser (acetic acid), yeasts, and perhaps more, which are all useful and used in KNF.
Overall, I’d say that kefir is great and should be used in a way very similar to the KNF Protectors. It’s worth reading the whole article on wikipedia, because it has a lot more information and can help you understand how it fits into KNF better than this brief answer.
- drake answered 2 months ago
It sounds like you may not have made the IMO correctly. It is essential, especially when it comes to animals, that the IMO does not exceed 50 celsius during the fermenting process. It should smell like a rich forest floor when done properly.
- drake answered 3 months ago
Yes, the IMO should still be “good”. It is best practice to top dress IMO applications, but without being able to directly observe the situation, in theory the IMO will begin to inoculate and persist in the environment and spread throughout the pig pen floor as the IMO has access to water and the other KNF solutions you have referenced being applied.
Your nose will know. Rice hulls are not the only thing that should be added. There should also be a foundation of wooden logs beneath the rice hulls, but I have seen just rice hulls in Korea, and minimal odor was emitted from this situation, whereas with the logs underneath there is zero odor.
- drake answered 3 months ago
Heating the vinegar to pasteurize it will stop the fermentation process.
- drake answered 4 months ago
No, agar can not be used for collecting IMO. The reason is that the agar is selective to the microbes. Soil microbes are diverse and will not culture well. You will get microbes, but they are not the microbes you want.
- drake answered 4 months ago