7Dust
Well-Known Member
Pop pop pop. Goes a babie.
Dennise - No Longer The Newest Of Newbies - Not Growing In MG - Perpetual
- Thread starter Dennise
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Dennise
Well-Known Member
Speaking of pop pop goes the baby... got to load some pics... I'll be right back....
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Dennise
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Everybody let me be the fist to introduce you to Princess Lei... The Pineapple Chunk...:
:.....
:.....
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Dennise
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Here's a few shots of Olivia... She is going to get potted up to a 5 gallon Smart pot later today if it ever stops raining long enough for me to waddle out to the shed....
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Dennise
Well-Known Member
Then here's just a few random shots of the Baby Tut and the newbies.....
Ok, here you go Humanzee. Here are answers to some of the questions you asked yesterday:
The three soil program is all about lifecycle nutrition. Baby soil is light in nutrients. Seedlings frequently struggle in rich soil. The baby soil has plenty of food for little plants without overdoing it. It also has more aeration amendment 4 parts base (in this case promix) to 1 part perlite. The veg soil has 6 parts base to 1 part aeration amendment. The baby soil is lighter and holds a bit less water to encourage fast early root development. In terms of NPK ratios it is nitrogen dominant. In a solo cup sized container plants grow very quickly in the baby mix. Typically they stay in baby soil for 18-21 days.
The veg soil is also nitrogen focused to encourage rapid vegetative growth. It is richer food. Think of it like this; you wouldn’t feed a human infant steak and a baked potato. Once the infant has matured to a certain point it is ready to get off the baby food and eat a grown-up diet. Another way to think about it is that the bottled nute crowd all start off feeding with very light doses and increase the amounts they feed gradually. Babies that get too much juice early struggle badly.
The flower soil has more phosphorous and slightly less nitrogen. The high nitrogen guano is gone, high phosphorous guano replaces it. Soft rock phosphate increases available phosphorous farther. Flowering plants need more phosphorous because they are manufacturing phospholipids for trichome production.
In essence, up-canning from veg to flower soil is analogous to switching from veg ferts to flower ferts. One thing that is consistent in all three soils is they seek to limit excess potassium. Potassium is essential. In fact, the plant will actually take more potassium from the dirt than either nitrogen or phosphorous. Potassium in large amounts interferes with the transport of other + ions like magnesium and calcium, however. This is one of the tenants of Doc Bud’s High Brix growing system. There is plenty of potassium in the soil and no need to add more. By avoiding high potassium additions we ensure that K does not interfere with other + ion transport in the plant.
I have referred to compost tea as a “bubbling buckets of futility” in the past and it makes LOS geeks mad as hornets. The idea is that the tea will introduce large numbers of beneficial microbes to the soil. The problem with this is that a healthy bioactive soil produces a healthy microlife community all by itself. Tea is sort of like adding a huge number of Syrian refugees to an already burgeoning community. Container plants that are fed tea are fed at a rate that far exceeds what a person would add by applying it to a garden bed. Think how much tea it would take to soak a 10 meter square garden bed a foot deep? Tea brewers often soak containers all the way to the bottom. My experience with tea is that I didn’t see any difference when using it so I no longer mess with it. Frankly, it is a mess to make. If you have the room, equipment, and time then tea is not going to hurt anything. I just don’t see any benefit to going to all the trouble for plants growing in a balanced, highly bioactive medium. When using any tea or drench I tend to think in terms of avoiding large amounts of potassium in flower. General Organics bio-marine has an NPK of 2-3-1 and is an excellent occasional drench for the plants in flower if you feel the need to give the plants a treat in. I also use Sea Com PGR which is a cold water kelp extract with an NPK of 0-5-5 as a foliar maybe once or twice in flower. It is a rich source of potassium but also has a bounty of phosphorous. As mentioned plants get that as a light foliar maybe twice in the flower cycle.
As far as how many plants can be grown from a batch of soil it depends on the pot size. When Dennise ordered all the stuff for her soil I calculated the amounts of soil based on 1 quart seedling pots, 1 gallon veg pots, and 3 gallon flowering pots – good sizes for indoor tent growing. If you add up the volumes keeping in mind that the existing soil moves with the plant (it takes 3 quarts of veg soil + the 1 quart of seedling soil to fill a gallon pot for example) you’ll find that the recipe Dennise posted is enough to do 10 plants or thereabouts. If you know the size pots you are going to use you can adjust the amounts of each recipe accordingly. The soils cost ~ $1.00 a gallon to make. When you consider that you have to buy dirt anyway and add in the cost of a bottled nutrient feeding program the costs are about the same. If you recycle the dirt the complete soil becomes more cost effective quickly. I don’t use the soil for cannabis multiple times, personally. I don’t throw it away either because I have lots of perennials in containers. I use spent dirt for potting up perennials. So, the cost is roughly the same as a bottled nutrient feeding program but the complete soil is super easy, no guesswork, it’s all organic, and it grows very nice brixy high quality cannabis.
I’m currently growing in a two soil system that does not have separate veg and flower soils. The reason is I found when growing large plants outdoors I was needing to pot up into flower soil way sooner than the plants were ready to go into flower the end of July or early August. Transplanting a three - four foot tall plant is kind of a pain, too. The new soil has a few more ingredients in it. It works very well. Pretty much, it has more phosphate in it than the veg soil in the three part system. I drench with 1 tsp / gallon 2-3-1 fishy ferts once every week – ten days to nudge the phosphorous up a bit in flower. I think of it as a treat for the plant rather than feeding. In the two stage soil I sort of give the plant a weekly treat. One week a top dressing of 1 part Yum, 1 part worm castings, and two parts fresh flower soil – about 2 cups of this mix scratched into the top inch of soil in the container, the next week 1 tsp/ gallon 2-3-1 biomarine, the next week a light foliar of 0-5-5 Seacom PGR at ¼ tsp/gallon. It’s not written in stone. It’s a treat like giving a good dog a dog biscuit. Indoors in relatively small containers the three part is the way to go. If you are growing large outdoor plants then a seedling soil directly into the final large container of hybrid veg/flower soil is probably the ticket. I can dig up and post the recipe for the soil I’m using now if you want. I actually teamed up with some buddies to mix up a hole yard of the new soil recipe and we split it up. Everyone has been super happy with it.
The discrepancy in the recipes RE the FFOF and compost… When Dennise first ordered all the things to make the dirt the recipe was the FFOF one. Dennise, however, had some great quality compost on hand already so we subbed it for the FFOF. The FFOF or compost serve the same purpose – they increase the diversity of humus in the soil mix. FFOF has composted forest and sealife but is also peat based and has perlite in it. If using a good quality compost you use less for this reason. Good quality compost or FFOF is an either or thing. Many dirt mixers get carried away with composted material. A little goes a long way. There is also humus added by the castings which are not nearly as “hot” as the compost, and from the Yum-Yum as the meals it contains break down quickly.
As far as adding a gnat/pest barrier it will interfere with top dressing the plants. I would wait and see if you have gnats and react to them if they turn out to be a problem instead of trying to prophylactically make sure they don’t become an issue. I assume that Buck uses a gnat barrier because they can be a problem in his situation/climate. If it was me, I’d skip the gnat barrier until you know you have an issue with them. If it turns out to be a problem then there are many ways to address the issue not limited to putting down a barrier. Top dressing is a “treat” for the plants. It’s useful but not necessary. I suppose you have to make a decision based on your own conditions and situation on that one.
The three soil program is all about lifecycle nutrition. Baby soil is light in nutrients. Seedlings frequently struggle in rich soil. The baby soil has plenty of food for little plants without overdoing it. It also has more aeration amendment 4 parts base (in this case promix) to 1 part perlite. The veg soil has 6 parts base to 1 part aeration amendment. The baby soil is lighter and holds a bit less water to encourage fast early root development. In terms of NPK ratios it is nitrogen dominant. In a solo cup sized container plants grow very quickly in the baby mix. Typically they stay in baby soil for 18-21 days.
The veg soil is also nitrogen focused to encourage rapid vegetative growth. It is richer food. Think of it like this; you wouldn’t feed a human infant steak and a baked potato. Once the infant has matured to a certain point it is ready to get off the baby food and eat a grown-up diet. Another way to think about it is that the bottled nute crowd all start off feeding with very light doses and increase the amounts they feed gradually. Babies that get too much juice early struggle badly.
The flower soil has more phosphorous and slightly less nitrogen. The high nitrogen guano is gone, high phosphorous guano replaces it. Soft rock phosphate increases available phosphorous farther. Flowering plants need more phosphorous because they are manufacturing phospholipids for trichome production.
In essence, up-canning from veg to flower soil is analogous to switching from veg ferts to flower ferts. One thing that is consistent in all three soils is they seek to limit excess potassium. Potassium is essential. In fact, the plant will actually take more potassium from the dirt than either nitrogen or phosphorous. Potassium in large amounts interferes with the transport of other + ions like magnesium and calcium, however. This is one of the tenants of Doc Bud’s High Brix growing system. There is plenty of potassium in the soil and no need to add more. By avoiding high potassium additions we ensure that K does not interfere with other + ion transport in the plant.
I have referred to compost tea as a “bubbling buckets of futility” in the past and it makes LOS geeks mad as hornets. The idea is that the tea will introduce large numbers of beneficial microbes to the soil. The problem with this is that a healthy bioactive soil produces a healthy microlife community all by itself. Tea is sort of like adding a huge number of Syrian refugees to an already burgeoning community. Container plants that are fed tea are fed at a rate that far exceeds what a person would add by applying it to a garden bed. Think how much tea it would take to soak a 10 meter square garden bed a foot deep? Tea brewers often soak containers all the way to the bottom. My experience with tea is that I didn’t see any difference when using it so I no longer mess with it. Frankly, it is a mess to make. If you have the room, equipment, and time then tea is not going to hurt anything. I just don’t see any benefit to going to all the trouble for plants growing in a balanced, highly bioactive medium. When using any tea or drench I tend to think in terms of avoiding large amounts of potassium in flower. General Organics bio-marine has an NPK of 2-3-1 and is an excellent occasional drench for the plants in flower if you feel the need to give the plants a treat in. I also use Sea Com PGR which is a cold water kelp extract with an NPK of 0-5-5 as a foliar maybe once or twice in flower. It is a rich source of potassium but also has a bounty of phosphorous. As mentioned plants get that as a light foliar maybe twice in the flower cycle.
As far as how many plants can be grown from a batch of soil it depends on the pot size. When Dennise ordered all the stuff for her soil I calculated the amounts of soil based on 1 quart seedling pots, 1 gallon veg pots, and 3 gallon flowering pots – good sizes for indoor tent growing. If you add up the volumes keeping in mind that the existing soil moves with the plant (it takes 3 quarts of veg soil + the 1 quart of seedling soil to fill a gallon pot for example) you’ll find that the recipe Dennise posted is enough to do 10 plants or thereabouts. If you know the size pots you are going to use you can adjust the amounts of each recipe accordingly. The soils cost ~ $1.00 a gallon to make. When you consider that you have to buy dirt anyway and add in the cost of a bottled nutrient feeding program the costs are about the same. If you recycle the dirt the complete soil becomes more cost effective quickly. I don’t use the soil for cannabis multiple times, personally. I don’t throw it away either because I have lots of perennials in containers. I use spent dirt for potting up perennials. So, the cost is roughly the same as a bottled nutrient feeding program but the complete soil is super easy, no guesswork, it’s all organic, and it grows very nice brixy high quality cannabis.
I’m currently growing in a two soil system that does not have separate veg and flower soils. The reason is I found when growing large plants outdoors I was needing to pot up into flower soil way sooner than the plants were ready to go into flower the end of July or early August. Transplanting a three - four foot tall plant is kind of a pain, too. The new soil has a few more ingredients in it. It works very well. Pretty much, it has more phosphate in it than the veg soil in the three part system. I drench with 1 tsp / gallon 2-3-1 fishy ferts once every week – ten days to nudge the phosphorous up a bit in flower. I think of it as a treat for the plant rather than feeding. In the two stage soil I sort of give the plant a weekly treat. One week a top dressing of 1 part Yum, 1 part worm castings, and two parts fresh flower soil – about 2 cups of this mix scratched into the top inch of soil in the container, the next week 1 tsp/ gallon 2-3-1 biomarine, the next week a light foliar of 0-5-5 Seacom PGR at ¼ tsp/gallon. It’s not written in stone. It’s a treat like giving a good dog a dog biscuit. Indoors in relatively small containers the three part is the way to go. If you are growing large outdoor plants then a seedling soil directly into the final large container of hybrid veg/flower soil is probably the ticket. I can dig up and post the recipe for the soil I’m using now if you want. I actually teamed up with some buddies to mix up a hole yard of the new soil recipe and we split it up. Everyone has been super happy with it.
The discrepancy in the recipes RE the FFOF and compost… When Dennise first ordered all the things to make the dirt the recipe was the FFOF one. Dennise, however, had some great quality compost on hand already so we subbed it for the FFOF. The FFOF or compost serve the same purpose – they increase the diversity of humus in the soil mix. FFOF has composted forest and sealife but is also peat based and has perlite in it. If using a good quality compost you use less for this reason. Good quality compost or FFOF is an either or thing. Many dirt mixers get carried away with composted material. A little goes a long way. There is also humus added by the castings which are not nearly as “hot” as the compost, and from the Yum-Yum as the meals it contains break down quickly.
As far as adding a gnat/pest barrier it will interfere with top dressing the plants. I would wait and see if you have gnats and react to them if they turn out to be a problem instead of trying to prophylactically make sure they don’t become an issue. I assume that Buck uses a gnat barrier because they can be a problem in his situation/climate. If it was me, I’d skip the gnat barrier until you know you have an issue with them. If it turns out to be a problem then there are many ways to address the issue not limited to putting down a barrier. Top dressing is a “treat” for the plants. It’s useful but not necessary. I suppose you have to make a decision based on your own conditions and situation on that one.
7Dust
Well-Known Member
Hey boo, guy name navigator will or might be popping in over here. he a new grower and was talking to me about growing and you got all experts here. so i referred him to come pop in.. i told him i learned from you and just gave him a link to stop in.
so he might.
so he might.
- Thread starter
- #9,328
Dennise
Well-Known Member
PJ your like having a soil encyclopedia....
....
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- #9,329
Dennise
Well-Known Member
I'll keep an eye out for him...
.. +reps for the help shout out..
.. +reps for the help shout out..
Lovely babies. You have the most adorable, consistent, unwavering, emotional, unbiased, and true-hearted way of spreading the 420 circle-of-love around & we love you for it Fifi. Just because we don't say it every other post know we think it all the time. "Capeesh"!That's probably the nicest anyone has thought of me in a very long time...:
Humanzee, Lobo... Welcome to "PJ's OSM Central" & LoboThank you Dennise!!! Thank you too, PJ. I only did one small grow in DWC, and did everything wrong. So I decided to start at the beginning again. I can get it to the seedling stage but then it seems to stretch too much and then die. Now I have PJ's soil and want to start from the first step, I am a bit nervous about trying to do a formal grow journal so wish me luck. Please be patient.Dan
Here is what I'm in now. There are some changes ingredient wise but the ratio of base / perlite / amendments is comparable to the veg and flower soil in the mix Dennise and Bob are using. Crab meal has a nice dose of phosphate and nitrogen but is low in potassium.
There are some other minor changes to v2.01. Excellerite, the panca clay I was using as a mineralising agent is no longer available retail and I didn't want to pay shipping on a 50 pound bag. It was replaced with Cascade Minerals basalt dust and glacial rock dust.
As a base this time I used 1 compressed 3.5 cubic foot bale of Sunshine #4 and one compressed bale of Klasmann-Deilmann K-1 plus perlite. The Klasmann is a European white peat that is milled to exacting specifications so that it's fiber sizes are uniform and there is very little "peat flour" or dust in it. Peat is great because it does not degrade too fast but it does degrade. A uniform peat composition allegedly maintains an ideal porosity to hold water when wet and air as the medium dries out. Small fibers and dust fill the pockets and limit water retention and air flow. I have to say I was impressed with the product. It is silky smooth and feels amazing. The jury is out on if it is worth the extra expense since it costs about 4x as much as standard peat moss and half again as much as Sunshine #4 or Pro-Mix costs.
I also added a little oyster shell flour this time. Ha ha. I guess there are quite a few differences after all.
1 5.0 cu ft bale Klasmann Deilmann K-1 with 15 % perlite by volume
1 3.5 cu ft bale of Sunshine #4 (yellow label)
The compressed bales break down into roughly double the volume so there was ~ 17 cubic feet of base material.
3.0 cu ft Fox Farms Ocean Forest
3.0 cu ft Chunky Perlite
2.5 cu ft Roots premium worm castings
5.0 Gallons Yum-Yum Mix
2.0 qts Crab Meal
4 # Cascade Minerals Basalt
2.5 # Glacial Rock Powder
2.5 # Soft Rock Phosphate
1.0 # Oyster Shell Four
2 cups granulated mixed mycos.
It cost us $210 buy the ingredients to mix the yard of soil. There are 201 gallons in a cubic yard. We also have plenty of rock dust, rock phosphate, etc to make another batch left over from what we purchased last fall. The leftovers will make mixing the next batch less expensive. Having friends to mix dirt with is great if you can do it because it spreads out the cost of buying amendments that are only available in quantities in excess of what the recipe requires.
There are some other minor changes to v2.01. Excellerite, the panca clay I was using as a mineralising agent is no longer available retail and I didn't want to pay shipping on a 50 pound bag. It was replaced with Cascade Minerals basalt dust and glacial rock dust.
As a base this time I used 1 compressed 3.5 cubic foot bale of Sunshine #4 and one compressed bale of Klasmann-Deilmann K-1 plus perlite. The Klasmann is a European white peat that is milled to exacting specifications so that it's fiber sizes are uniform and there is very little "peat flour" or dust in it. Peat is great because it does not degrade too fast but it does degrade. A uniform peat composition allegedly maintains an ideal porosity to hold water when wet and air as the medium dries out. Small fibers and dust fill the pockets and limit water retention and air flow. I have to say I was impressed with the product. It is silky smooth and feels amazing. The jury is out on if it is worth the extra expense since it costs about 4x as much as standard peat moss and half again as much as Sunshine #4 or Pro-Mix costs.
I also added a little oyster shell flour this time. Ha ha. I guess there are quite a few differences after all.
1 5.0 cu ft bale Klasmann Deilmann K-1 with 15 % perlite by volume
1 3.5 cu ft bale of Sunshine #4 (yellow label)
The compressed bales break down into roughly double the volume so there was ~ 17 cubic feet of base material.
3.0 cu ft Fox Farms Ocean Forest
3.0 cu ft Chunky Perlite
2.5 cu ft Roots premium worm castings
5.0 Gallons Yum-Yum Mix
2.0 qts Crab Meal
4 # Cascade Minerals Basalt
2.5 # Glacial Rock Powder
2.5 # Soft Rock Phosphate
1.0 # Oyster Shell Four
2 cups granulated mixed mycos.
It cost us $210 buy the ingredients to mix the yard of soil. There are 201 gallons in a cubic yard. We also have plenty of rock dust, rock phosphate, etc to make another batch left over from what we purchased last fall. The leftovers will make mixing the next batch less expensive. Having friends to mix dirt with is great if you can do it because it spreads out the cost of buying amendments that are only available in quantities in excess of what the recipe requires.
- Thread starter
- #9,332
Dennise
Well-Known Member
PJ....
7Dust
Well-Known Member
I'll keep an eye out for him...
yeah we were just chatting and it came up who taught me and issues with plants and i had told him that people i circle with know it all. their is people for Dirt, clones, seeds, and much much more. and most of them pop in here all the time. he can get to know what he needs then. just giving some goodness . is all.
- Thread starter
- #9,334
Dennise
Well-Known Member
High y'all... 7 are you watching the news...
Have you ever heard of such evil as those 2 students from Virginia Tech.. Blacksburg... Jeez....
Any how I got Olivia repotted and decided to just pot her up into a 3 gallon Smart pot instead of the 5 gallon due to a post from PJ and his visions of granduer... I skipped the 1 gallon pot with the veg soil step because it is an auto.... I have found going from the baby pot and only doing 1 transplant seems to keep from shocking them as badly.... I decided I would try and avoid not having enough room and I think with what I have going right now I am off to a pretty good perpetual start........ 
So awesome to see you getting back into the swing of things my friend! Queen of green is back in full effect 
Recognize!!!
Any how I got Olivia repotted and decided to just pot her up into a 3 gallon Smart pot instead of the 5 gallon due to a post from PJ and his visions of granduer... I skipped the 1 gallon pot with the veg soil step because it is an auto.... I have found going from the baby pot and only doing 1 transplant seems to keep from shocking them as badly.... I decided I would try and avoid not having enough room and I think with what I have going right now I am off to a pretty good perpetual start....
Nice! Manzee, Olivia broke out of the ground on the 22nd. She is 13 days old today. Denise knows she is ready for grownup food. The key to autos is getting them big as fast as possible. That's why Denise only transplants them once and right into flower soil. An auto will start to bloom as soon as the plant reaches sexual maturity - depending on the strain 4-5 weeks. It's not about how large they are, it's about how old they are that signals the hormonal changes. It doesn't make sense to put an auto through two transplants when it would just be in the veg soil for two weeks so Dennise goes right to flower soil with 'em.
The genetics on this one are something I haven't seen but don't be surprised if it grows every bit as quickly and as healthily as one of Atrain's autos. The Sugar Mango Dennise grew sure did... It's certainly banging along nicely @ 13 days.
7Dust
Well-Known Member
Peejay, how and what do you look for in maturities in the plants. What is the key thing to look for. Or is it just 4 to 5 weeks.
7Dust
Well-Known Member
Yeah I seen it. One disappeared in town here few days ago. It's seems to be a rash of people missing or being taken. I blame the illegals , main reason they got two in the city trying to snatched a girl on camera the other day. It's crazy
Here are a couple of pics I went back and found of the Sugar Mango Auto when Dennise grew it this way last time.
This is going to be fun to watch!
This is going to be fun to watch!