As a lot of you know I grow organically. One of my ingredients is malted barley. I use it at 1/4 cup ground malted barley to about 4.5 gallons of water, and I use it 2-3 times a cycle.
Another way I use it is to eat up old roots in soil I remove from pots to get a new plant in. I leave most of the plants soil and just take out enough to get a new plant in. From 8 plants I get enough soil and roots to fill a 20 gallon tote. I make a strong mix of ground barley (1cup) and wet that in with water. In a couple months the roots are gone and the soil is nice a fluffy, and I put it in my soil container to use again.
Last time I added a half bushel of fan leaves that I layered in and doubled the ground barley. It came out like always and I put it in my soil container.
So a few weeks ago I transplanted and used some of this soil to fill in around the new plants. About 2 gallons per plant. A few waterings later I started getting mutated top leaves. Also in that soil I started clones, a tray of 11. 6 died and the rest looked iffy.
It took me a while to realize I'm working with atomic soil, lol. Now I have a crazy ass stretch, and had fan leaves that I removed like pie plates, with huge 1/4 inch leaf stems. Never seen anything like it. The pics above are at 2 weeks in flower and budding has just started.
The deal with barley is each seed has enough energy (starch) to supply a seedling for 3 weeks, but the real deal in the enzymes they have. When the sprouts get to the optomin length brewers stop the sprouting to lock in enzymes for brewing. Turns out mj likes beer. Go figure! I use 6 row malted barley, and grind it in an old blender. I buy it 50lb at a time and it will last me years.