Building A Better Soil: Demonstrations & Discussions Of Organic Soil Recipes

[kelticBlue]

Not my idea, I was copying others here - possibly Bobrown14

Me too. Not my idea. I prolly got it from BB14 as well.

 

[JimSaskFarmer]

I see my post doesn't quote your quote of me
Looking at it now I just want to make sure you know i wasn't being a dick. BB14 definitely has his shit locked down and has done a tonne of research. In fact going through his journal is why we decided to go organic.

 

[Tony Urban]

I see my post doesn't quote your quote of me
Looking at it now I just want to make sure you know i wasn't being a dick. BB14 definitely has his shit locked down and has done a tonne of research. In fact going through his journal is why we decided to go organic.

Yeah bb14, Sue, and a few others are the reason I went organic. It just feels right. Go with the gut.

 

[Guy Cavallero]

Subbed.....luckily Van Stank found you guys for me lol.......always down for something new.

 

[Van Stank]

Yeah bb14, Sue, and a few others are the reason I went organic. It just feels right. Go with the gut.

You can't beat the taste and the smoothness of organic grow medicine. I know I have said this on other journals and threads but I just don't like smoking cannabis grown with chemical nutes. My brother grows commercially in Washington state as well as recreationally at home there, and I have sampled a few of his strains as well as at least 6 strains from dispensaries in Colorado and Washington state and they all taste like crap and have me coughing lungs up. None of the 4 strains I grew organically have made me cough yet. They just taste so much smoother and better. I can actually taste flavors of the cannabis. I know my sample size for chemical nute grown strains is probably smaller in size than many of you, but I can't see anything really changing my mind.

 

[Van Stank]

Subbed.....luckily Van Stank found you guys for me lol.......always down for something new.

Glad you made it Guy, there is a lot of good info on here for anyone considering going organic.

 

[Radogast]

You can't beat the taste and the smoothness of organic grow medicine. I know I have said this on other journals and threads but I just don't like smoking cannabis grown with chemical nutes. My brother grows commercially in Washington state as well as recreationally at home there, and I have sampled a few of his strains as well as at least 6 strains from dispensaries in Colorado and Washington state and they all taste like crap and have me coughing lungs up. None of the 4 strains I grew organically have made me cough yet. They just taste so much smoother and better. I can actually taste flavors of the cannabis. I know my sample size for chemical nute grown strains is probably smaller in size than many of you, but I can't see anything really changing my mind.

My experience is like yours, the taste and smoothness of my organic grow is superior to other cannabis.

Bud washing also makes a noticeable difference ==> Bud Washing


After 3 years growing close to organic in soil, I am planning to do a test of non-organic growing. I'm going to do a hempy grow - garden nutes in perlite - and taste what the other side tastes like when I do it myself.

Please don't hate me for it

 

[Van Stank]

My experience is like yours, the taste and smoothness of my organic grow is superior to other cannabis.

Bud washing also makes a noticeable difference ==> Bud Washing


After 3 years growing close to organic in soil, I am planning to do a test of non-organic growing. I'm going to do a hempy grow - garden nutes in perlite - and taste what the other side tastes like when I do it myself.

Please don't hate me for it

Hey I have thought of trying a side by side comparison just for that reason. Was I just unlucky on the 10 or so strains I tried and lucky on the 4 I grew or is that just the way it is? Only one way to do it!! Hempy is more appealing than coco to me. You don't have to water every day or even twice a day when they get big. Sue seems to have good things to say about it. But even if its not bad, I am just naturally drawn to soil. I love dirt. I love making my own. I have to think that the dirt makes it taste better. I have tried veggies grow aeroponically and they don't taste anywhere near as good as the stuff I grow outside.

 

[Van Stank]

Oh and I did a little bit of a bud washing experiment on my harvest as well. A few of the ATF colas I grew on both plants were harvested and dried with no bud wash. All the rest of them were washed. I haven't tried smoking any of the unwashed buds yet. Wondering if I will be able to tell a difference between the two.

 

[TheFertilizer]

I've cut off the old plant near the soil line and dropped the clone in the same 7-10 gat pot 3-4" away. At least a dozen times. Never had an issue using a Clackamus Coot mix.

I haven't tried with seeds, just clones.

Weird, I tried it with Happy Frog and the clones just seemed to hit the old root-ball and then stop. They didn't die but they basically just stayed dwarfed. I had two others I had in solo-cups with fresh soil, so I dug out a solo-cup sized hole in the root ball for them. They grew into the solo-cup, then seemed to stop getting bigger once the roots found the old root-ball.

I figured it was just from the roots decaying making the soil too hot.

 

[kelticBlue]

Weird, I tried it with Happy Frog and the clones just seemed to hit the old root-ball and then stop. They didn't die but they basically just stayed dwarfed. I had two others I had in solo-cups with fresh soil, so I dug out a solo-cup sized hole in the root ball for them. They grew into the solo-cup, then seemed to stop getting bigger once the roots found the old root-ball.

I figured it was just from the roots decaying making the soil too hot.

Pretty cool, was the soil maybe compacted from the roots?
I think I had that with an old Chamomile plant I chopped then I planted a canna seed over its place with its old roots still in the container, I was thinking the old roots may have compacted the soil and stunted my canna plant. would make sense in the small container I was using.

always something going on

 

[TheFertilizer]

Pretty cool, was the soil maybe compacted from the roots?
I think I had that with an old Chamomile plant I chopped then I planted a canna seed over its place with its old roots still in the container, I was thinking the old roots may have compacted the soil and stunted my canna plant. would make sense in the small container I was using.

always something going on

Yeah, definitely could be, the soil had been recycled twice already by that point plus it was pretty well rooted in there. But that's what had me worried about using old soil with roots in it.

My Sunshine Mix + EWC + Perlite seems to be doing okay for the plants I put it in, but I added more perlite. Like way more. It was looking like mud when I watered it. So I added about 4 gallons of perlite to the 10 gallons or so that was left of it. It's pretty dang perlite-y.

The ones I transplanted are finally starting to dry out after 10 days, so I think it probably needed it. Someone told me I need to water with a surfactant because of this peat moss being hydrophobic. I think I just watered when the mix was still way too moist. I don't know, but all I have for a surfactant is some Palmolive and I don't want to risk it killing my microbes with it. Thinking about going to pickup some aloe.

Here was 3 day's growth...

But it's not trouble-free. The plants are getting some curled up leaf edges around the margins/serrations of the leaf, like heat stress. Which it could be since the temperatures are pretty hot, but my gut tells me it's the soil mix because I have other clones going in a different mix that aren't exhibiting the same edge curling ( quite as bad ) and I've seen it get much hotter without as pronounced signs of it. I'm wondering if it was just the timing of transplanting at the onset of a heat wave, or if the lack of aeration in the soil is causing them a little trouble perspiring, but I'm not going to worry about some little stress signs when presented with growth like that.


So my little soil analyzers seem to be approving

 

[Guy Cavallero]

Yeah, definitely could be, the soil had been recycled twice already by that point plus it was pretty well rooted in there. But that's what had me worried about using old soil with roots in it.

My Sunshine Mix + EWC + Perlite seems to be doing okay for the plants I put it in, but I added more perlite. Like way more. It was looking like mud when I watered it. So I added about 4 gallons of perlite to the 10 gallons or so that was left of it. It's pretty dang perlite-y.

The ones I transplanted are finally starting to dry out after 10 days, so I think it probably needed it. Someone told me I need to water with a surfactant because of this peat moss being hydrophobic. I think I just watered when the mix was still way too moist. I don't know, but all I have for a surfactant is some Palmolive and I don't want to risk it killing my microbes with it. Thinking about going to pickup some aloe.

Here was 3 day's growth...

But it's not trouble-free. The plants are getting some curled up leaf edges around the margins/serrations of the leaf, like heat stress. Which it could be since the temperatures are pretty hot, but my gut tells me it's the soil mix because I have other clones going in a different mix that aren't exhibiting the same edge curling ( quite as bad ) and I've seen it get much hotter without as pronounced signs of it. I'm wondering if it was just the timing of transplanting at the onset of a heat wave, or if the lack of aeration in the soil is causing them a little trouble perspiring, but I'm not going to worry about some little stress signs when presented with growth like that.


So my little soil analyzers seem to be approving

What are you running for temps?

 

[TheFertilizer]

What are you running for temps?

This was when it was starting to cool off too, been as high as the mid 90s

 

[Guy Cavallero]

This was when it was starting to cool off too, been as high as the mid 90s

Swamp cooler brother. I just did a build in my journal. Lowered my temps by 7°F in my tent.

 

[Conradino23]

Also your RH with these temps is too low. You need to push it towards 55-60% at least, cause with 30s they're gonna suffer.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Also your RH with these temps is too low. You need to push it towards 55-60% at least, cause with 30s they're gonna suffer.

Yeah, I'm pretty much unable to do anything about it though. If I run a humidifier the temps will be too much. I guess I could try to turn the fan down. I pretty much perpetually run this low humidity, it hardly ever gets up to 50% even in flower. I live in a pretty arid area.

I think it's more than an environmental issue though, the temperatures have been cooling off, and the curling of the leaf edges has started to subside, but now they're looking like they've got burnt tips. One is doing some clawing but not sure if it's too much N or wind burn.

I might have given them too much water again. Each 1 gal pot got about a solo cup's worth of water, which is a lot more than I'd usually water a pot this size, but the soil sucked it all up.

...oh and the weird mutilated leaf tip are from FIM'ing.

 

[Conradino23]

Get few damp towels and hang them around, bowls with water will help too.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Get few damp towels and hang them around, bowls with water will help too.

I've tried that too but it never really ups the percent up more than a few points. Maybe if I turned the exhaust fan down, but then I have the heat issues build up because it's an air-cooled hood. But in the winter it's even worse than this, I've had RH down as low as 15% and the plants were healthy--well at least healthier than this lol I can't speak for the landrace Sativas, but this little Indica dominant hybrid cross I have should definitely handle the low humidity better, based on past experience. So the RH wasn't really on my radar, but yeah, waiting for it to cool down a little bit more to try to mitigate that. Though I swear, it seems like the low humidity drives extra trichome production, because even my fan leaves will get trichomes. Been afraid to mess with it too much.

I'm still worried about this Sunshine Mix 4 + EWC mix. I'd hate to think that this mix was too rich, all I added to it was earthworm castings--though it did supposedly have "kelp meal plus rock dusts" too. Thinking maybe just good old over-watering since it was super muddy the first watering, and then once it dried someone recommend I used a surfactant because peatmoss is supposedly so hydrophobic. Well, each 1 gal pot of it accepted a whole solo cup's worth of water, which is a lot more than I usually water a container this size.

Plus then there's the FIM'ing which I don't normally do, so they could just be stressed out in general. I'm trying to get them a little happier before I flip to sex because the indica dominant hybrids aren't feminized, and then I'm going to flip them back basically as soon as I see pistills so the reveg isn't too stressful, and had planned on putting them in 3 gallon pots with the other mix of soil I made--which is basically just this plus Bio-Live, neem-seed meal, and BioLive. Was still hoping to get that soil analyzed before planting into it.

 

[Tony Urban]

I have more organic soil building questions lol, thanks in advance

- Is there any benefit from using my aerated compost teas as a soil drench versus top feeding? Is the only real benefit the improved oxygen draw into the soil? A solid benefit no doubt but, just curious if there was other benefits.

- I am kinda interested in the cation exchange process, and the drench used in high brix recipes/programs, and wonder if there is something I can brew and use between feeds of ACTs? These drench recipes dont seem to be as open source as ACT and SST's. I have been tossing the idea around in my head to use certain components of the ACT (kelp, sugars, humic, etc) with the addition of fermented sprouted seed tea or fresh coconut water as a soil drench...alternating between the ACT and a growth enhancing type of soil drench during the veg phase. Will mixing these clash? Can I add neem meal or oil to these?

I am also curious about the soil compaction or movement of fine particulates (amendments/clay/etc) to the bottom of the pots with drenches. Is this a valid concern or considering the temporary state of the potted soil, just a moot point? I suspect normal top feeding causes this movement regardless.

One more question lol, not related to drenches, but more about continuous improvement in the soil. What are some other good additions I can harvest from my local forest to increase soil health? I was thinking about getting some: red rot (decayed tree matter with white fungus which I assume is mychorizzae), partially decayed plant matter (humus), porous charcoal (looking for biochar like portions) from severely burned trees (a lot around here), sphagnum moss, and if possible some earth worm castings. I was going to put portions of these into my storage bin of soil and add some compost tea and let it do its thing while awaiting use next transplant. In theory expanding diversity in the soil organisms and overall structure. Do I add more perlite to balance this organic material out in the name of aeration/drainage? What about adding some coco? I also wanted to add a container of worms from the bait shop. Is any of this a waste of time? Is there any real risk of introducing harmful bacteria or organisms?

To make a long story short, this dude just wants good soil and good interaction between the plant, roots, and soil. Naturally. Without kits or bottles

Cheers,
UA