New City Grower 2.0

trichomes;2209797 said:

Thanks reg, I am honored to be on the PJSS-list. here is a pasted soil-share from a good friend that will not mind my pasting it here, basically it explains that there are at least 2 types of soil that can be created.

I hope we can get a lot of members "jumping in" on this awesome reply to my question about custom blended soil preparation.

MY QUESTION seeking friends advice: "im making a batch of soil for an INDOOR grow and i'm hoping you have any thoughts or maybe something to add. this is my 1st yr making custom "batches" so far so good, I have used it in the most recent transplants with WW & NoLie,

here's what I have mixed up so far

1 cubic ft/ 5 gallons OMRI org(OUTDOOR) soil

1.5 gals. fresh worm castings from my 2 yr old worm factory n Rubbermaid tub

0.5 gal Perlite

1 cup yum yum (discussed w PJ in my yard, in last week or 2, he recommendeds it)

2 Tblsp, dolomite lime (ph controller)

1/2 cup 4 - 4 - 4 G & B organic fertilizer

thats it so far, i need to do sum research on pre-made & aged/acclimated soil, maybe you can share some tricks, just a thought no biggie if you can't add or suggest. im not even sure i can use the outdoor soil inside, i will ask Lester, by pasting this msg.

thnks buddy"

MY FRIENDS REPLY:
First off, I should say all my previous experience was with MiracleGro and my home compost. Everything I'm learning beyond that is just in the last 6 months

It's a complex question that I'm just beginning to get a grip on. I don't know enough to comment on the amounts/ratio of your ingredients, except that I suspect more Perlite (maybe 2 gal) would be even better, helping the roots get air, and would just mean more frequent watering. If it was me I'd be thinking of adding minerals and microbes.

My impression is that there are two basic approaches - supersoil and mineralized soil, and I've mainly focused on the mineralized.

Supersoil is soil loaded with nutrients. Your recipe is a supersoil - castings, yum yum, and G&B. I guess the risk is in making it too hot and burning the roots or plant, or imbalanced, leading to lockouts.

Mineralized soil is soil loaded with raw minerals and inoculated with microbes which convert the minerals into nutrient form.

A mineralized recipe has ingredients like peat moss, glacial rock dust, azomite, rock phosphate, gypsum, greensand, calcium clay, sulfate of potash, etc. plus humic acid and fulvic acid. There is a product called Ancient Forest which I think is a blend of a number of minerals. The soil microbes - bacteria and fungi - and mycorrhizal fungi, are in products like Mykos, Great White Shark, Rhizostym. Often these mixes need to cook, or age/acclimate for a month or so to get the microbes established and give them a head start. Then, during the grow you just add water. The microbes provide the roots with all needed nutrients in the friendliest, most natural available form, the mycorrhizae merge with and extend the roots, and the plant sends sugars down through the roots to feed the microbes. A good mineralized soil is pH stable - you never need to think pH unless your water is really bad.

People use all sorts of combinations of the two approaches, and often in a very haphazard way, like, "Hey, I heard azomite is good so I threw a bunch in.." People try this and that, gradually develop some intuition about it, and come up with something that works for them. Gardenfaerie, for instance, seems to have this intuition. Most people get good or bad results without understanding why, and come to conclusions that may not be valid.

The other approach to mineralizing is to have the basic soil or medium tested and get a detailed recommendation for which additives in what amounts you need to make it perfect. Doc Bud's kit is what his lab recommended specifically to amend HPProMix Soil - if you were starting with MG or Happy Frog the amendments would be different amounts and/or different ingredients. (Doc says just adding garden compost will totally mess up his formula and give lower Brix numbers.) You mix his amendments and inoculants into the HPPro and let it cook for a month. If available, you can 'tune' the mix with crumbled dried leaves and trimmings of mj. Makes sense - everything in it is obviously stuff mj needs. His kit also includes stuff you add to every other watering, teas you mix up, and foliar sprays twice a week, so it is a very specific program.

Ideal420 Soil (which I have been using) is supposedly based on this sort of lab analysis, specifically balanced for cannabis. I see that they have added more ingredients, including nutrients, lately. I don't know what this means in terms of Brix exactly, but I'm sure it's all balanced through their testing. I do know they let their batches cook before shipping. They sell a 9 Plant Kit - 4.5 cu. ft. soil plus Rhizostym - for $200 delivered to your door. (You should hit them up for a free sample!). $200 sounds like a lot, but look what I would have to buy to make my own.

This is what it currently has in it: Canadian Peat Moss, Vermiculite, Perlite, Bio Char, Worm Castings, Fish Meal, Calcium Clay, High Calcium Lime, Rock Phosphate, Sulfate of Potash, Humic Acid, Fulvic Acid, K-Mag, Glacial Rock Dust, Azomite, and their proprietary blend of mycorrhizal fungi and beneficial soil bacteria.

I've been very impressed with !deal420 - everything I put in it responds immediately with lush deep green vigorous growth and great roots, and I've been real shy about adding any nutrients. My winter plants took way too long, and in smallish pots, so I think they 'ran out of gas' somewhat towards the end.

If you ask me, "What if I get Ideal420 and add some YumYum?" I don't know. It might be good, it might be too much and burn, and it might just be more of what there is already plenty of, and therefore a waste

In any case, the more nutrients coming from the soil, presumably the less feeding you will do.

So - to summarize - I'm getting a sense of the whole picture, and by next year I bet I could mix up a better-than-average soil, buying lots of different raw ingredients. But it would take college-level study to truly know what I was doing, and lab work.

Or I can buy Ideal420 for $200 and grow nine 5gal or four 10gal - whatever - a half ounce of my final yield covers the cost and I spend little or nothing for nutes. I think it would be dumb luck if I mixed up something better. And it establishes a baseline for comparison. Eventually I'm sure I'll do some experimenting.

I also want lab analysis of the soil from my yard for large-scale amendment for flowers and vegetables.

And surely this is enough of an answer for now.

thoughts? all , .

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