Growing Without Bloom Nutes By Farside05
hawk4200
Well-Known Member
hawk4200
Well-Known Member
super soil
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- #1,144
When I first thought about growing, I was going to do a guerilla grow outdoors. I made up a rather large batch of "super soil" and put it in some large wheeled garbage cans to cook. My wife got wind of the idea and vetoed the plan. About a year later, after trying some medical herb for her fibromyalgia, I finally got the go ahead. My guerilla idea was replaced by a small tent in a closet. I opted for soil-less and fertilizer then. There's just something unappealing to me about bringing "shit", be it worm, bat, cow, etc., into my home.
Is that for a cake?
Looks fantastic...and somehow pricey. The Baroness would not approve.
Ganjagrandaddy
Well-Known Member
This store bought LOS is not cheap either.lol. I did want to give it a whirl before so bit the bullet and now got 4 x37lt pots full of it at £30 a pot + the amendments too. soil for life is a selling point if no tilling with it. hoping now adding mc into it works wonders. I run 8 coco in 20lt so will be interesting for comparing with MC in both.
The Professor does alright with just sandy soil and MegaCrop!
Schnookie
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Is anyone keeping soil moist during flowering? I know @Emilya was discussing it in her water treatise and wondered how it went (is currently going?) or if anyone else does that? Debating whether a daily watering is warranted (my temps are staying high 70's to low 80's and daytime RH has been only 35%.
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This store bought LOS is not cheap either.lol. I did want to give it a whirl before so bit the bullet and now got 4 x37lt pots full of it at £30 a pot + the amendments too. soil for life is a selling point if no tilling with it. hoping now adding mc into it works wonders. I run 8 coco in 20lt so will be interesting for comparing with MC in both.
Forgive me, but I don't get the concept of running LOS in tandem with Mega Crop. In my mind it's like saying that both methods are lacking something that you're hoping the other provides. Either Mega is a complete nutrient and provides everything your plant needs to grow and needs nothing from the LOS, or the LOS is complete and needs nothing from the Mega. Seems redundant and a hell of an extra expense. Running one vs the other, like your original journal title, with no extra supplementation seems to be a better scientific experiment to me. Soil for life is a misnomer in my book if you have to keep amending it. You're just trading one kind of "fertilizer" for another.
If you're in soil or Pro(Faux,Praux)Mix, it's not a good idea to water on a schedule. I water based on lifting the plots to see if they're light. In veg I let them get lighter, and in flower not as light. But I never water based on when I last watered.
For veg, I run a wet/dry cycle. In flower Im keeping them moist. Less volume, more frequency. Also something I was recently made aware of, is the last 2 weeks of flower, the plant really slows down drinking.
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I'm not super scientific with watering. Pot heavy to moderate weight, no water. Pot light, add water. I grow in soil-less, not soil, and don't find I need to water daily. At their max thirst it's more like every 2 days. When they are young or at the end of their life, it is even less frequent. Daily watering is more of a coco thing than soil or soil-less.
Skybound
Well-Known Member
That's all I'm doing, lol. I'm doing my best to emulate DB's brix soil using your Faux Mix and my salts. IMO, it is exactly as you say, though there is a lot of studies that suggest soil microbes enter into a beneficiaries in common relationship with plant roots and act as a mediator between the soil components and the roots. It's not just the amendments I have to add to the Faux Mix, but also the fert feeds I give throughout the plant's life that further supports your point. I'm not sure if the subcool or coots blends need to be re-amended between grows, but Doc's kit does and mine will as well.
For comparison, hydroponic nutrient regimens tend to push the K a lot harder than what's in most soils and the ladies will gobble all of it up which helps them grow bigger and faster, but in doing so, they uptake less calcium and the cells don't have as much strength, but the only real downside to that that I ever witnessed is thinner branches to hold up the heavier buds. I won't be taking my first soil harvest till mid December and beyond, but the rumor mill suggests soil smoke tastes better than hydro smoke, so we'll see.
Doc's kit needs to be amended during the grow! A lot of the LOS growers will top dress or water with teas during the grow. Even Van Stank (whose water-only soil grows the most amazing plants) will sometimes top dress for a specific plant, usually in flower.
Skybound
Well-Known Member
I forgot about that. I think they gotta top dress twice, once with EWC, the other with more amendment, but I've not actually used the kit, so just speaking from memory of the feed chart and contents.
There are a few different timed drenches with Doc's kit, one of them I always read as "catatonic."
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I've kind witnessed this in my change to Mega Crop from Dyna Gro. I used to target a N-P-K of 3-1-2 and changed up to 2-1-4. My plants are bigger but the stems are not as stout. It's almost like they grow so fast that they never get a chance to beef up stems. As long as the yields are greater, which they have been, it's just something I'll deal with.
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Yes, even with the silica. For 3 grows since the change with various different strains.
Skybound
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AKAIK, silica just makes the cells more flexible which is definitely helpful in preventing snaps when they buckle under the weight.
When formulating my own nutes, I've tried several variations of K:Ca:Mg in search of a ratio that would give me fatter stems but never found it. Calcium is super sensitive and making a cation imbalance is very easy. Mixing my own Megacrop is what rescued me from that. MC is a very good formulation, though it, like other regimens are still hard pressed to flesh out the ideal cation balance.
When formulating my own nutes, I've tried several variations of K:Ca:Mg in search of a ratio that would give me fatter stems but never found it. Calcium is super sensitive and making a cation imbalance is very easy. Mixing my own Megacrop is what rescued me from that. MC is a very good formulation, though it, like other regimens are still hard pressed to flesh out the ideal cation balance.