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 maryanne3087
Stranger
Registered: 06/27/10
Posts: 1,111
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 ProMix + bag of goods = worry free soil start to finish. 
#483939 - 09/30/10 11:22 PM (14 years, 1 month ago) |
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Anyone recall Breeder Steve's goodie bag back 10+ yrs ago I'm not sure how many growers would be familiar with it as I don't know if any Canadian growers are on this forum who have been growing for a decade or longer. It was his secret concoction of organic amendments to mix in with a bale of ProMix to create a soil suitable to grow out many strains start to finish without anything but nutrients. This seems to be a goal of many soil and soil-less growers that is practicality. No one could ask for a easier crop if all they did was water every other day with pH'd water.
There are recipes and ways to mix up a soil that will be amongst the best available for amended soils. A lot of people rant and rave about FoxFarm soil being so perfect but it won't get you through flowering without adding nutrients.
I'm thinking of a project either involving amended coco or amended ProMix with the goal of creating a worry free soil for a variety of flowering plants and possibly learning ways to fine tune it. I'm currently growing some plants in coco with soil like fertilization strategies.
Crazy Composter (of ICmag) and I have bounced some ideas around about organic amendments to either coco or ProMix, coco being the more interesting of choices I decided to try out coco first. I didn't have the same ideas in mind as I do presently. My goals with coco as soil was to merely try coco as the backbone of a soil, expecting to have to add nutrients with the water. My experience with coco using soil amendments has been valuable as I now have some first hand experience on how it will behave when certain things are added.
We start with a bunch of clean rinsed coco, preferably stuff with a pelleted texture often referred to as coir(?). We add sand for microlife and some added trace elements. We either add worm castings or compost to add microlife and food for the microlife. I personally have worm castings for indoor use, and keep my compost for outdoor use. Worm castings will always be dense, if they seem light out of the bag it's only because they're not wet, adding worm castings will always lower the aeration of your soil. Compost can be more beneficial for the texture of the soil but could be harder to obtain for some. Perlite could be added if desired, I kept the amount of worm castings down in my mix to reduce the need for perlite. I had plans to use lime to buffer the pH but decided not to. I also wanted to use some kelp but never sourced any quality seaweed.
I basically figured I could mix as follows:
Coco 88%
Worm Castings 10% (I used far less for some plants)
Sand 2%
Pyroclay added as directed, 2-3 times.
I start my seeds in plug trays of coco feeding them either BioBuzz FishMix or GH Floranova grow until they're roots are begging for more space then drop them into my coco mix. I then start to feed them with top dressed guano raked into the surface of the "soil" with a giant pitch fork (a table fork, actually) a tsp is applied at least once a week, no more than every 5 days. This seems to be working rather well for me but I suspect more nutrients would need to be used if mixing throughout the medium. For starting seeds, I also tried making a organic bed of worm castings and coco I figure this has some advantages being:
-Won't burn the seedling
-Will not have to worry about adding nutrients for a couple weeks
-Will add worm casting nutrients to the rest of the coco in the pot without ruining it's texture.
-Saves me the trouble of transplanting the small plug of coco which can dry out quite quickly.
-It's organic!
-It would make planting seeds into this hot mixture possible.
My next test will be to mix up my own concoction of organic amendments (which won't be a secret) and add them to either ProMix or Coco and see how close to harvesting I can get without running out of nutrients... then I will get back to the drawing board. I will list some things that may be considered as components of the concoction.
-Seaweed/Kelp meal 1-0.1-2 (great for micros, and K is valuable for organics)
-Compost (strictly green compost)
-Worm castings 3.2-1.1-1.5 or 3-1-2
-Blood meal 12-0-0
-Bone meal 4-12-0 steamed can be 1-13-0
-Fish Bone Meal 3-16-0
-Bat/Seabird Guano(likely a mixture of several NPK ratios vary)
Flowering Indonesian 2-15-2
Rubicon Veg Guano 10-3-1
Rubicon Fruitbat Guano 2-17-0
Sunleaf Peruvian 10-10-2.5
Sunleaf Desert Guano 8-4-1
Sunleaf Fossilized Seabird 1-10-1
Sunleaf Mexican Bat 10-2-1
-Manure(cattle)
-Rock phosphate
-Green sand 0-0-3
-Pyroclay
-Seabed deposits (langbeinite) 0-0-22 (K, Mg, S)
-Comfrey 2-0.5-5
-Cottonseed meal 6-2-1
-Neemseed hull ash/Neemseed meal (interested in this for a while and it's insecticide/fungicide properties)
-Sunflower hull ash 0-0-40
-canola seed meal
-Feathermeal
-Alfalfa 3-2-2
-Quite possibly a root inoculate
That's all for now,
MA3087
Edited by maryanne3087 (10/06/10 07:44 PM)
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 kyuzo
Stranger Than Fiction
Registered: 07/05/10
Posts: 981
Last seen: 11 years, 10 months
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Re: ProMix + bag of goods = worry free soil start to finish. [Re: maryanne3087]
#483952 - 10/01/10 12:52 AM (14 years, 1 month ago) |
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Sorry if these are noobish question, but what benefit is the pyroclay, and isn't there a drastic difference in green sand (which I understand is more of a nutrition additive for potassium?), and regular river sand?
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trichome
THC
Registered: 07/20/08
Posts: 104
Last seen: 10 years, 9 months
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Re: ProMix + bag of goods = worry free soil start to finish. [Re: maryanne3087]
#484015 - 10/01/10 09:18 AM (14 years, 1 month ago) |
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This is why cultivation will never become boring!
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maryanne3087
Stranger
Registered: 06/27/10
Posts: 1,111
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Re: ProMix + bag of goods = worry free soil start to finish. [Re: kyuzo]
#484033 - 10/01/10 09:51 AM (14 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
kyuzo said:
Sorry if these are noobish question, but what benefit is the pyroclay, and isn't there a drastic difference in green sand (which I understand is more of a nutrition additive for potassium?), and regular river sand?
Sand vs clay, the sand adds the added grit essential for microlife. The clay however will give more readily accessible nutrients to the plants.
The pyrophylitic clay contains all 16 macro nutrients and 50+ trace minerals, most notably for it's silicates.
Greensand provides Fe, Si, K, Mn the river sand will provide mostly silicate. There is some amount of doubt amongst horticulturalists as to how long the sand needs to sit in the medium for it to break down enough for it's nutrients to become available to the plants. Many argue that it won't benefit cannabis as you go from seed to harvest in 3-4months. Composting your soil for a period of 6+ months would remove this doubt. I'd be willing to bet if you're not composting your soil there's a very good chance that the river sand will be just as useful as the greensand. They both provide the microlife with a home which is what I'm really after.
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maryanne3087
Stranger
Registered: 06/27/10
Posts: 1,111
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Re: ProMix + bag of goods = worry free soil start to finish. [Re: maryanne3087]
#484864 - 10/03/10 10:43 PM (14 years, 1 month ago) |
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Let's review Subcool's supersoil
-8 large bags of a high-quality organic potting soil with coco fiber and mycorrhizae (i.e., your base soil)
(apparently this can be substituted with 2 bales of Sunshine mix or 200+ litres of peat)
-25 to 50 lbs of organic worm castings
-5 lbs steamed bone meal
-5 lbs Bloom bat guano
-5 lbs blood meal
-3 lbs rock phosphate
-¾ cup Epson salts (I think langbienite is the organic version of Epsom salts?)
-½ cup sweet lime (dolomite)
-½ cup azomite (trace elements) (I think healthy homemade wormcastings and some kelp will provide trace elements well)
-2 tbsp powdered humic acid (Will use Humisolve powdered Humic acids 57% humic 12% fulvic)
Does anyone know how epsom salts are produced? Langbienite is advertised organic and is a K-Mg-S source with a NPK of 0-0-22 as in Epsom salt(minus the organic)
A revision changed the Bonemeal to Fish Bone meal, which could be interesting!
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kyuzo
Stranger Than Fiction
Registered: 07/05/10
Posts: 981
Last seen: 11 years, 10 months
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Re: ProMix + bag of goods = worry free soil start to finish. [Re: maryanne3087]
#485053 - 10/04/10 04:37 PM (14 years, 1 month ago) |
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"Does anyone know how epsom salts are produced? Langbienite is advertised organic and is a K-Mg-S source with a NPK of 0-0-22 as in Epsom salt(minus the organic)"
here's what wiki has to say:
Epsomite is a hydrous magnesium sulfate mineral with formula MgSO4·7H2O or simply MgSO4. Epsomite forms as encrustations or efflorescences on limestone cavern walls and mine timbers and walls, as a volcanic fumaroles, and as rare beds in evaporate layers. It was first systematically described in 1806 for an occurrence near Epsom, Surrey, England, for which it was named.
<<<Epsomite crystallizes in the orthorhombic system as rarely found acicular or fibrous crystals, the normal form is as massive encrustations. It is colorless to white with tints of yellow, green and pink. The Mohs hardness is 2 to 2.5 and it has a low specific gravity of 1.67.
Epsomite is the same as the household chemical, Epsom salt, and is readily soluble in water. It absorbs water from the air and converts to hexahydrite with the loss of one water molecule and a switch to monoclinic structure.>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsomite
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maryanne3087
Stranger
Registered: 06/27/10
Posts: 1,111
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Re: ProMix + bag of goods = worry free soil start to finish. [Re: kyuzo]
#485161 - 10/04/10 09:26 PM (14 years, 1 month ago) |
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I wonder if all epsom salts are naturally produced.
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