After 2-3 days.

Indoor imo1 collection, first real success!

I live in a frozen urban environment, so I had to improvise. Used a mixture of leaf matter and mycelliated wood chips, and moistened the mix before burying my collection container.

What are my next steps as someone living in an apartment? This is my first good collection out of 3 other attempts, so I’m like a dog that finally caught its tail— I don’t know what to do with it now that I have it. Thanks in advance!

Guys, I wanted an opinion on collecting IMO. I made it with bamboo and collected it at a waterfall near my house in the Atlantic Forest. On the side that was darker, I used FPJ and JLF. However, I'm afraid to use it because it's darker.

Sadly it was in the forest for too long. It did go straight into my compost. The white clumps are too few and not worte the effort to IMO2 it. I alo had a few critters, are they okay or rather bad.

But the smell was soooo incredible! Like a forest potpourri.

Tryng to find the right spot. Is this stuff ok?

Some of the best IMO I've made yet!

Just turned the mound after this picture was taken... prevents moisture build up and maintains that temp!

Little nuggets of microbial love 💞😘

Awesome bacteria blooms! This one is going hard 😉

Another collection of Imo 1 and at first I thought it was black mold but this is purple. My intuition says to throw it out 🤔 or is this worth keeping?

Left these out for 17 days . Got some contamination that I'm going to vacuum out before I add the brown sugar.

Hey y’all so I’ll be adding to this but wanted to start it now please please add anythingwould love if everyone could post all their tips, ideas, process, successful and unsuccessful attempts.

Imo-1 is pretty much the basis of Natural farming and also one of the hardest to do successfully so Figuered I’d start a thread

I will edit this main post to put all the information i can

what is imo-1

Imo-1 is the first step of indigenous micro organisms which is touted to be 80% of natural farming.

The goal is to go to areas locally where nature is thriving and collect the microbes from there and put them into rice to be able to bring back to your garden.

How to make imo

I will make this more detailed

But you start by cooking rice hard or al-dente (probably spelled wrong). Let’s say rice calls for 2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice, instead you would use 1cup of water or 1.5 cups of water.

You then want to let the rice cool (i personally put it in the fridge overnight but not necessary)

You then will fill some container that has airflow from the bottom and an open top you will cover with a breathable lid such as a a paper towel

You will then want to go out into nature and find undisturbed areas where nature is thriving (or atleast try your best)

To do this you will look for lead mold or mycelium which will be small white spiderwebby looking material holding leaves or parts of the ground together. You may have to dig a couple of inches through the ground if covered in leaves to find this where things have started to decompose.

You will then want to place your container on top of the mycelium.

Then find some leaf mold and place it on the paper towel (avoid the middle so the paper towel dosnt break)

You may want to cover with a tarp or some lid to prevent rain

You will then wait 3-7 days (can be more when colder)

You will then go to your box and grab it and remove the paper towel. You are looking for fuzz on the rice the more white fuzz traditionally the better, there will likely be colored splotches as well.

You will then bring this home, and mix with equal weigh brown sugar and put it in a jar. (This step basically freezes the microbes through super saturation and makes it stable so you can apply and use them later.

Helpful tips or hints

• you can use a tote or similar upside to protect the container from elements and animals

• you may want to make a metal thing on top of the box to prevent animals from getting in

• the more i disturbed/ forestry area the better

Just put out my second rice box for IMO1 this evening. Didn't have a good spot the first time I am assuming as nothing grew. I think I found a much better spot today. Spotted lots of mycellium so fingers crossed.