How to mix peat moss as substrate

VilliageIdiot;2924115 said:

Well honestly you are asking the magician to expose their secrets. Well that is what we do here but specifically the mix itself is yours to learn and experiment with.

If I framed the question a certain way this thread would get 10 pages of responses on how best to grow.

There are people like myself who understand soil and I will give you a ratio of those ingredients that will give you great success but that does not mean I am right nor is it the best for your grow situation.

As long as you don't do hydro growing a living soil and recycling it correctly reuse it to gain a robust living medium is really the source of top quality cannabis.

And the optimal ratio of blends actually changes per the needs of the plants which means different strains want it slightly differently really. Most people just over build for that.

Specifically to answer.

pH is not an issue if you are using a good living compost as you mentioned above. If you keep the compost alive the soil will buffer the water and nutes and you wont need to bother with pH.

A very rudimentart soil blend is 1/3 perlite, 1/3 organic mass, 1/3 decent bag soil. We will add lots more to it but that is your base.

From your ingredients you have perlite. the organic mass can be the peat moss. I use typically steer manure or coco or some blend of that. Steer manure is a lot of things but is mostly organic matter after a few weeks. it starts out as pure fertilizer and microbes and is everything a plant needs to get through veg. you can cut it with coco or peat moss to get it down in nitrogen without loosing organic material in the mix. Many people swap out Steer manure for Earth worm castings.

What you are missing is a decent bag of soil to mix in that has lots of good stuff too much to list off. You can fake it with that compost if that is decent and "clean" stuff. If it is good compost it will be too hot and you will want to cut it with the peat moss.


So those 3 get you a base. Now I assume you are in liters not gallons? Well I am high so I will let you convert.

For every 5 gallons of soil about 1/4 cup dolomite lime. doesn't hurt to over do it just a waste of money. Depends more on how mig the pot is and how long you are growing.


Humic acid depends what source you mean but likely you are talking the black powder. That is about 2 teaspoons per 5 gallons.

If you didn't add earth worm castings to the base add a few cups per 5 gallons.


Zeolite...not needed. Use it if you like in place of some of the perlite. So if you want to use a few cups of that take a few cup of perlite out.




Now if you are using good compost it doesn't need to cook long at all, that is what needs to cook and by definition is done. So if the compost is cooked you can mix and go and that should mostly work. It works better to put into the compost a bunch of stuff listed below and let that cook into the compost for a few months. 2 months min 4-6 is better. I got some stuff right now that is second generation and 8 months that is really kicking right now.

(Subcools Recipe)
8 large bags of a high-quality organic potting soil with coco fiber and mycorrhizae (i.e., your base soil)
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
½ cup sweet lime (dolomite)
½ cup azomite (trace elements)
2 tbsp powdered humic acid


Subcools you layer though as it is too hot to just plant into. Just use the bottom 1/3rd of the pot for that and filed the top 2/3rds with fresh 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 base mix and you will be fine.


Remember to recycle your soil. Like a fine wine it ages and for at lest 3 runs it keeps getting better.

Read up on brewing your own earth worm casting tea (EWC tea) and that will be all you really need. I am growing now without using any "fertilizers", just good soil and EWC tea every 2 weeks.

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