I wonder if you could experiment a bit regarding the soil you use for the plants? A few years ago I put a balcony box on my balcony that was about four metres long and it took a lot of soil to fill it. We retrieved it with the wheelbarrow. We found a dredged spot of topsoil nearby and took it. It seemed to have everything in there, micro-organisms, worms and enough rotten to not need to take any more fertiliser. The plants we then planted in the spring thrived quite splendidly. In addition, we built a small wood storage shed as a compost collection point.
I wonder if more diversity stimulates growth. The lettuce and succulents seem to reflect that thought. Do with garlic what you did with the spring onions, the green stems are really delicious!
When we started a bed in my brother's garden this spring and scattered seeds, there were such a variety of species that began to grow quickly that we were able to watch it happen. It was a great experience! There was not even an infestation of one particular type of insect, the insects we saw were of different types and a natural balance seems to have formed there. Of course, a garden exposed to wind and weather is no comparison to an artificial biosphere, but I wonder how far you could push it. Presumably, however, you would need a slightly larger area and therefore more light and heat and again more equipment and so on. LOL - a condo has its limits, doesn't it?
P.S. Our observations led us to conclude that the competition for sunlight made the very many plants in a heap grow bigger and faster. I am almost certain that there is something to this theory.
Hello my friend,
thank you for the great comment!
I've tried some experimenting with composting soil in my home with some eggshells and adding slow release nutrient pellets while keeping the soil moist, but the results were not very good lol. It produced (just a guess) an acidic soil that damaged the plants afterwards with what looked like burned leaves. I am not a hundred percent sure because I didn't have a PH test kit during this time.
That's really cool how you achieved these results with living micro-organisms. We have some gardeners here who swear by keeping lively soil. There is definitely something to this, rather than keeping a completely sterile biosphere lol. After all, nature does not contain such a thing as sterile soil, so it seems counterintuitive to try to maintain sterile soil. The small ecosystem is not balanced in this sense.
This idea about plants competing for light and promoting growth is very true my friend. To me it's a theory that is grounded in logic and just makes perfect sense if we look at how nature operates. Since I have placed some cannabis plants in an area with other breeds of plants, the cannabis seems to be growing at a much faster rate, likely in this competitive energetic field. It's very cool actually, and shows that cannabis is a very dominating plant in an environment with other plants. It's evolved quite well! And furthermore is adapted to produce more females than males, naturally, through selective breeding with cultivators! Super cool, we've helped evolve them to be more feminine! haha
Yeah a condo definitely has its limits lol. Even further limited by small tents to maximize light efficiency. It's quite a challenge to grow this wild plant indoors, but the rewards are very gratifying. Perhaps planting some garlic is a good idea. I've considered it, as it's one of my favorite herbs and I think it's very healing for the body to ingest daily.
Thanks again, you always bring some thought provoking dialogue to the table 🤗