"So I believe user error patting promix. Just put it in pot. And grow! Water slow do u don’t pack it "
Yup, would agree with that. Important lesson to have learned. Whatever you are using as a media you need oxygen in the root zone.
Hydro, you can aerate it with bubblers, or use perlite, clayballs with the nutrient fluid flowing over and through so it gets aerated. My understanding is that coco stays pretty loose and fluffy?? "Hempy buckets" have the roots getting down into basically a permanent water table, but thats cool because the upper 3./4 of the pot is all perlite with lots of spaces for air to penetrate.
Soil it depends on the mix. Mine may not be the best and most efficient soil but the coarse river sand, peat, composted pine bark fines seems to work, IF i use that at 50% with medium coarse perlite to fluff it. Dmap, but not wet and it wicks water from the bottom up quite nicely.
People use all kinds of additives for fungi and bacteria and whatnot, but the basic for a healthy root zone is aeration. And if its well aerated you will have little or no problem with over watering so can relax about that.
None of the expensive additives are work jack shit if you dont have an aerobic root zone.
Funny. Living on the Sunset side of the Great South Land ...worlds best beaches bar none...
We have VERY old soils here, but some of the worlds most diverse flora. Reason for that is that the plants have evolved lots of different ways to extract nutrients from the poor and salty soils and most of those involve mychorrhizal fungi. Some of those fungi are specific to one species of plant. You never have success at transplanting native orchids here unless you do it along with some of the soil it grew in because of that...and even then its very difficult with some species.
I knew some of the people who did original work here on fungi / bacterial mixes that could be commercially cultured and then applied to wheat and other grains crops and it did lead to yield improvements but users had to work out the cost / benefit which isn't always there. depends on a lot of factors apparently. The main guy ended up moving to the US to commercialise and made lots $.
Its more mainstream now i guess. For this kind of grow i'm actually a bit skeptical as to the cost benefit of the expensive hydro shop additives. Have a decent worm farm. Add the diluted juice from that which will have a plethora of the local fungi and bacteria in it along with a broad range of macro nutrients and trace elements and you are probably all good.
LoL! I had a look at the ingredient lists on the packs of some really expensive "dedicated" hydroponics nutrient concentrates in the local hardware / garden shop. Next to them was the common garden liquid fertiliser packs..much cheaper and the same stuff. Well, different %'s for some components but very similar and 1/3 to 1/4 the price.
I think for a full on hydro grow i'd use the off the shelf concentrates. Easier and pH is important for hydro and i'm lazy. But for a soil grow i keep it simple and cheap and use garden variety stuff. Seems to me that the expensive stuff is marketing to the desire of growers to interfere with their plants and "optimise" everything.
Nah...be kind to them, give em lots of light, as much water as they want, a feed every few days or a week and they are happy happy weeds.....provided they have a nice fluffy root zone.
sorry, that turned into a longer post than i thought....
Seeyahs!
. I'm not finding the ProMix HP retaining water yet but I've only used it in two 3 gallon plastic pots so far. With that much visible perlite already in it I wasn't going to add any more when I transplant to 7 or 10 gallon felt pot final homes, but now you're making me nervous!
