Alright here we go. That was likely going to be the most amount of work done this grow. It’s my own fault for still thinking I’m in my 20s/early 30s. I have a dryer I don’t use that I am going to repurpose into a soil mixer if it’s larger enough. Otherwise I may have to cave and buy a compost tumbler. As it stands currently, every week or so I’m gonna have to dump three 20 gallon bins out, mix them up by hand, then rebin them just to make sure it’s all properly mixed up and cooking evenly.
While that’s not terrible right now, it will get exponentially worse with more soil.
Anyway, enough of that, here’s how it went:
Above you can see all of the ingredients used to make this first batch. I am keeping an eye out for a deal on some rock dusts which will be added within the next week or two.
I laid out a tarp over the driveway and got to work.
I’m this next image, I took something I saw on
@StoneOtter journal and splayed out my meals for mixing in a fancy way lol
That is 2 cups blood, bone, fish bone, and kelp meal, with 3 cups of greensand. The greensand dominated. I’m looking for a larger tray for next time.
Pictured above is the other amendments I have chosen. 5 cups oyster shell, 2 cups Dolomite lime, 2 cups gypsum, 1/4 cup SRP. Take a moment to think about that. In 48 gallons of medium, you only need a 1/4 cup of SRP. That’s some powerful stuff. It also stays well past the first grow so it will continue to deliver for our plants for many moons to come.
Here’s the beginning of the base mix, 3 CU feet of FFOF potting mix
It looks dull to me. I combed through it to see if I could find any signs of pests or trash. I found a few random bits of plastic that looked like the bag it came in. This isn’t surprising, you can find all kinds of wild stuff in potting mixes. I used to find chicken bones and pieces of cardboard and plastic in the Stonington blend super soil. No pests visible at this point, which is cool but doesn’t mean much lol.
That is 12 gallons of EWC sitting on top ready to be worked in. I had a chance to look at the difference between the Gaia green EWC and Happy wrigglers stuff and the GG stuff looked a little fresher even with being almost 6 months old. I used 6 gallons of GG and 6 gallons of the wriggler stuff.
Here’s a shot of it being mixed in along with 9 gallons of perlite
This part was still relatively easy. Once you add perlite into the EWC and mix it in it becomes easier to mix it up. I forgot to snap a pic of the 9 gallons of perlite on top since I was stoned and in a groove lol.
Here’s a shot of 6 gallons of coco on top
I used way less coco than I was expecting which is cool for later use but forced me to have to create another Rubbermaid bin container for holding.
Coco being mixed in
Here’s a shot of the final 3 gallons of perlite added on top of the mixed in coco
At this point it still was relatively easy. Perlite makes it pretty simple to mix the base up well.
Here’s a shot of all the amendments being added to the base mix
You can see in the image that it already was going to be a pain in the butt. The amendments, especially the meals, liked to stick to the mix. Simply turning the soil wasn’t doing very much to mix everything in so I had to grab a rake and a spade to really mix everything together well. I rotated the soil as much as possible while pulling from the bottom and mixing left to right. This process of mixing by hand took about 30 minutes of just straight working it over and over.
Finally though I had mixed it all up and got a good looking final product:
48ish gallons of high powered soil on its way to pushing any cannabis plant to its limits. Once I was finished mixing the life began swarming. There were quite a few flies that kept trying to get into the soil. Any time I would take a break at least 5-6 adult flies would jump all over it. This tells me that there is quite a bit of organic matter and potential for life in the soil.
I was able to fit the final mix into three separate Rubbermaid bins. This was one more than I anticipated.
There it is binned and stored. It will maintain a decent temperature, above 68-70 F where it sits. This mix will likely sit cooking for about 40ish days before I use it. Probably more around 45-50 but we’ll see.
Now because of how it looked as I was mixing, I am not convinced that it is mixed up thoroughly. I could be wrong but better safe than sorry. So what I am probably going to do is every few days or so, dump the bins onto the tarp, mix them up and toss them back into the Rubbermaid bins. I’ll do this for the first week or two so I know everything is mixed thoroughly.
Going forward I would prefer if I could put it all into one large container that I can spin with a hand crank so I know that it’s all effectively mixed together, is stored well, and so the entire mix can cook together instead of in separate bins.
The final recipe is as follows:
Base Mix:
18 gallons potting mix (ocean forest)
12 gallons EWC
12 gallons Perlite
6 gallons coco (rinsed)
This base mix alone would be enough to power a plant all the way through. It would however require calmag interventions and possible rescuing depending on how well the plant bloomed. A 15 gallon pot filled with this mix would turn out some quality bud.
We’re not interested in that though. We want a powerful soil that gets better with age so we start off from the very beginning focusing on soil structure and microbiology. Here is the final list of amendments added:
5 cups oyster shell (crushed)
3 cups greensand
2 cups Dolomite lime (prilled)
2 cups Gypsum (pellitized)
2 cups blood meal
2 cups bone meal
2 cups fish bone meal
2 cups kelp meal
1.5 cups all purpose 4-4-4
1/4 cup Soft Rock Phosphate
I am waiting on rock dust and cow manure. When I went to purchase the cow manure it was the bottom of the palette and had been sitting for a couple weeks. They have a new shipment coming next week so I will purchase it then so hopefully it is fresher.
Next full post, I will explain the different amendments used, and why. Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!
so there’s some changes I’ll have to make. First, no more lights on during the day. I’ll be dropping my schedule to 16/8 and will only run in the off hours, I.e. 6 PM to 10 AM.. I’ve gotta double check peak hours but I’ll also likely flower at 11/13 as well
I think both the Stoningtons and the geoflora would be excellent as spikes, topdressings etc. If you have some glacial rock dust or azomite or basalt rock dust that will help too. The stoningtons or Geoflora may contain it already.
