Radogast 2 - Return of the Clones

Sweetsue said:
How are the worms taking to the coco coir? As I type that I had to laugh, because worms thrive on neglect, so I almost never go looking anymore. I only disturb them for their weekly feeding.
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I last looked at them on 1/22 so about 6 days ago. They still had food.
With the heat turned up they are wriggling all over the place, climbing on top of the top layer newspaper and checking out the empty worm tray above.

I have fed two corners of the worm tray. After I feed all 4 corners and the middle I will start breaking apart my coco coir brick to fill a second tray. I'm not going to offer them a new home too early. If I move them to the next stage at around 50% uneaten coco coir, I guess that would be a good ingredient for future soil.

I talked to the wife today about ordering rock dust, oyster powder, neem, etc. She is supportive :)
 
Rado,
You can do it!

I'd love to see you grow in a CC mix. I personally guarantee that you will have lush, vigorous growth in veg, and large frosty flowers.
As long as you can water, your environment is half way decent, a stellar grow is a given. I'd love to offer you any and all help I could give you if you go that route.
 
COorganics said:
Rado,
You can do it!

I'd love to see you grow in a CC mix. I personally guarantee that you will have lush, vigorous growth in veg, and large frosty flowers.
As long as you can water, your environment is half way decent, a stellar grow is a given. I'd love to offer you any and all help I could give you if you go that route.
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You (and anyone else here) could start with a post or a PM on where to mail order source ingredients.
My local hydro store carries a local basalt rock dust(they sell it by the pallet) but that's it for exotic nutrients.

I estimate I need to mix up about 9 cubic yards for indoor grow over the next year.
If the price is not prohibitive, twice that amount will be applied outdoors in various non-420 garden beds.

I'm also bemused about rock chunks for soil. 3/4 inch sized and below?

I haven't done my homework. Should I start by reading a Clackamas coot thread?
 
Radogast said:
You (and anyone else here) could start with a post or a PM on where to mail order source ingredients.
My local hydro store carries a local basalt rock dust(they sell it by the pallet) but that's it for exotic nutrients.

I estimate I need to mix up about 9 cubic yards for indoor grow over the next year.
If the price is not prohibitive, twice that amount will be applied outdoors in various non-420 garden beds.

I'm also bemused about rock chunks for soil. 3/4 inch sized and below?

I haven't done my homework. Should I start by reading a Clackamas coot thread?
Click to expand...

In estimating soil needs, I put the cart before the horse!
I would like to flower 4 to 8 plants in a 4x8 space with a seperate veg area.
Given space and weight of pot constraints, the MAXIMUM pot size for a no transplant grow would be 2 foot wide.

I had assumed I would continue in 5 gallon bucket, but.. is that the best size choice?

The bottom of my 4x8 room is a 96x48x6" tray. It is level, so it might lend itself to "swick" watering.

Thoughts?
 
I'm trying to figure out how much soil I will have to build too. I think I'm going to need a lot. I want to harvest 6 plants a month in the no-till, and I want a solid 2 month veg. So soil for solo cups, #1pots and... well shit, if I want to do 6 a month, I'll need at least 18 finishing pots, right? Cool. How much soil is that? Am I gonna need to make a cubic yard? Cool.

I think I am going to do 7gallon no tills, I've read 5 will work, but it's harder, I'd do 10gal, From what I've read of CO and others, 10gal is the sweet spot for indoor. I rent my house though and will have to tear my entire set up down and get it out at least once a year and 10 gallons would be a bear to move about. 7 will be a bit of a bitch too I think, but worth it too.

That's what I think I know about that :)
 
Rado, sweetleaf,
Let's do it like this. We can look at the soil recipe and look and what's available locally in both your areas. I have a cheat sheet handy for that, which should make it easier.

I have to work today though. :( Boo!

Rado, you could google ROLS thread and read about how all this started. I never made it past page 25 or so... Very interesting reading
though.

Let's break it down then.

LOS, living organic soil notes.

Soil mix, CC mix


Equal parts of Sphagnum peat moss, some aeration deal (pumice, rice hulls, lava rock - whatever is sitting in the garage) and finally some mix of humus - my compost, worm castings some black leaf mold I bought from the local 'worm guy'
To each 1 c.f. of this mix I add the following:
1/2 cup organic Neem meal
1/2 cup organic Kelp meal
1/2 cup Crab meal (or Crustacean meal when available - it has Shrimp meal with the Crab meal. It's a local product from the fisheries on the Oregon & Washington Coasts)
4 cups of some minerals - rock dust

After the plant is in the final container I top-dress with my worm castings at 2" or so and then I hit it with Aloe vera juice and Comfrey extract. Or Borage. Or Stinging Nettle. Or Horsetail ferns. Whatever is ready.


The Rock Dust Recipe
4x - Glacial Rock Dust - Canadian Glacial (Gaia Green label)
1x - Bentonite - from the pottery supply store
1x - Oyster Shell Powder - the standard product from San Francisco Bay
1x - Basalt - from Redmond, Oregon (new product at Concentrates - about $18.00)
 
We can start with the easy part the base mix.

SPM is available at any of the big home improvement stores or your
Local hardware. Or you can sub leaf mold if you can get some.

Aeration: also readily available at HD type stores, although garden center type stores have better options. I like lava rock and pumice for these. Other things work. I have lots of perlite,lava rock, and pumice in my own soil, because I had lots of perlite to use up. The problem with perlite is that it floats up to the top of your no tills over time and doesn't do the job anymore.

Humic material: this is the foundation, the most important part of the equation. Don't cheap out or slack here. Your mix requires 1/3 quality humus. You can use finished composts, vermicompost, or leaf mold here. A bag of wiggleworm won't do it though. Quality is the key word. For those with out worms, buy some a really good compost and a really good vermicompost, use equal part of each for your 1/3 humus portion of your soil. Now, rado, if you did rake up and screen some leaf mold you are covering two bases there so you could only use VC and be just fine for humus in the soil without purchasing a compost in addition. For high quality bagged composts look at coast of Maine lobster compost or oly mountain fish compost or something similar. We want compost that doesn't use bio sludge or solids (like many cheap bagged composts use).

There is the base mix. As far as vermicompost goes, getting it locally would be cool, shipping is a bitch! Check Craigslist in your area for worm guys. This quick guide will help you find a solid source.

read this before buying EWC !!!!!! - Blogs - 420 Magazine ®
 
Thank you, CO. It's not only Radogast and Sweet who are benefiting from your knowledge. Duly copied and pasted. Plenty of crustaceans here in Greece. *grabs pestle and mortar*
 
Sweetleaf, you should look at the oly mountain fish compost, being in the west coast. It comes extremely highly recommended.


Rado, Coast of Maine will be your best bet for a compost to purchase. And, I think I may have found a product that could be great for you. CoM also sells this product, which I just read a coot post where he says it might be nice in a soil mix.
Lobster and Kelp Fertilizer
It looks like you could kill a few birds with one stone with this one. I'm emailing them to find out EXACTLY what is in it and in what approximate ratios before we should pull the trigger on this product, but it looks promising.
 
I just called them up and spoke with fecilia, the quality manager for the company, ext 201.

She was a pleasure to deal with.

Full ingredient list:
Fish (bone?) meal
Feather meal
Lobster/crab meal
Alfalfa meal
Worm castings
Liquid seaweed

I of course asked why liquid seaweed and not kelp meal. She explained that the product is made into granular, uniform pellets through a process that uses a liquid as a binder for the other ingredients. The liquid seaweed is the liquid they use as a binder to pelletize the mix. I then asked about ratios and she said she "literally wasn't allowed to divulge that info", and I get that. But I said to her "for example, if your product was 40% feather meal I wouldn't want to use it", she assured me it wasn't even near that. All ingredients are organic and product is omri listed. I would use it if was starting out. I'd still get some kelp meal though, you will be using that from time to time in botanical teas and as a top dressing component.

You could easily use, say, 1.5 cups of this mix+1/2 cup of neem seed meal (cake) / cf of soil. and then we're on to the rock dusts, which is where it gets interesting.
 
I knew all this incredible growth from this soil would catch a few growers. :laughtwo::green_heart:

I have purchased almost everything except the SPM from Build A Soil. It made my life easier and the customer service and decent prices have made them a joy to work with. The vermicompost was so fabulous that I ordered more and expanded the mix. Most of my current wish list is for this company.

Rad, a good SWICK can be any depth, as long as you're able to keep 1-1 1/2" between the bottom of your pots and the water level. We tend to be obsessive gardeners anyway, so if you need to make use with shallow you water it every day or possibly morning and night (if it's REALLY shallow). The big trick is to never let it dry out. You can set them up to be used by as many pots as you can get onto them. That tray in your room may work at that. How deep is it?

The best thread I've found on this is on another site, run by a woman who goes by Noowannb. The thread is gold. I was so impressed I joined the site to sing her praises.

My favorite thread/journal on no-tills is also on another site and is run by a gentleman who calls himself BlueJay. Easy to google (same site as Noowannb) and well worth the search. Clackamas Coots is all over that journal. These are the guys who worked out the particulars on our soil mix and then proved to the world that you could successfully no-till in containers and harvest spectacular quality grow after grow after grow. The thread is now closing in on 300 pages with no end in sight.

SweetLeaf, there are occasional posters on that thread who have successfully maintained no-tills in 3 gallon pots, with minimal effort, for years on end. Utilizing regularly scheduled additions of enzyme teas, and finding ways to incorporate things like aloe vera, coconut water, Ful-Power fulvic acid, Agsil (potassium silicate powder), TM7, kelp meal, alfalfa meal, and neem meal make success easier to maintain. Bio accumulator teas add diversity, always a good thing. All of these things can either be added as drenches or sprays or cycled through the worm bin and applied to the pots as EWC top dressings and simply watered in.

I'm slowly learning that the secret to a successful no-till is the regularity of application of these beneficial additives. I have a wish list that I'm slowly-but-surely purchasing from. On page 8 of my journal (post #116) I laid out my dream watering schedule, based strongly on BlueJay's success. It needs updated some, but it gives a pretty good idea of the concept. I'm still working my way through BlueJay's journal and learning as I go.

I haven't even begun to play with foliar sprays yet. My pots are now too heavy (yes SweetLeaf, 7 gallons get to be ridiculously heavy!) to be easily moved and the space doesn't lend itself to spraying. It's something I know will benefit the plants, but I'm not sure yet how I can pull it off.

Today I'm researching the particulars of a bountiful mineralized soil so that I can give an informed answer to a question on my journal. Fascinating stuff. I need to get over to that no-till thread and do some studying.

:Namaste:
 
Sweetleaf, can u make it here, Concentrates, Inc. | Organic agricultural specialists since 1938

I would love to be able to go to this store. It has everything you need for cheaper than anywhere else. And drive there=no shipping=save a boat load on the heavy stuff.

I'm gonna wait to here back from you guys before we tackle the rock dusts.
 
I wish you guys plenty of good bounty. I am just going to use Happy Frog and some mosquito bits in 3 gal pots watered by hand. 7 gal pots as a perfect size is just too bulky to rotate around everyday. I do have ten 7 gal cloth pots I have used before but the result was no different than my 3 gals. I don't have the luxury of space for making composts or soil mixes.

I will ask you this. When my plants begin to yellow during flowering, is that a product of the genetics of the plant or does root bounding have anything to do with that?

:peace:
 
Sweetleaf, you literally could walk out of this store with each and every single thing you need to make your soil. This concentrates place is organic soil heaven. Makes me wanna drive to Oregon and make soil, you got it easy, man. The rest of the world has to piece it together, pay shipping etc.
 
xtrchessreal said:
I wish you guys plenty of good bounty. I am just going to use Happy Frog and some mosquito bits in 3 gal pots watered by hand. 7 gal pots as a perfect size is just too bulky to rotate around everyday. I do have ten 7 gal cloth pots I have used before but the result was no different than my 3 gals. I don't have the luxury of space for making composts or soil mixes.

I will ask you this. When my plants begin to yellow during flowering, is that a product of the genetics of the plant or does root bounding have anything to do with that?

:peace:
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Yellowing of the plant late in flower. . You mean (Fan leafs right?) That is a sign of the plant using the last of the nitrogen in its system. It's perfectly fine and natural. If your plant has turned yellow, you may have a case of that disease the guy on sin city has ;) haha never seen a yellow plant. Got a journal?

I&I
 
Way to be an enthusiastic advocate for LOS CO. :Love:
 
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