Indoorganic Vic's Super Soil water-only "Environmental education" grow

Discussion in 'Organic Grow Journals' started by Marapa, Jan 4, 2011.

  1. High all!

    A bunch of things conspired this fall to get me off my butt and building an indoor grow environment. Reading Rumple's bubble bucket thread was a part of it. So clear, so inspirational! Seeing the Blue Ridge reefa thread--man oh man, the proof is in the budding. Pulling for Cali Prop 19 and getting more tuned in to the global cannabis advocacy movement via the internet...that's played a role for me, too. Most motivational of all was losing my longtime herbman last year; since then I've been mostly without this plant I love so much.:(

    No more! my goal is to get a couple or three strains I like a lot into continuous production. I plan to take a year or so learning and tweaking the environment while running a lot of strains, not caring too much about yield quantity or speed, just taste and stone quality and ease of production. Then maybe I'll amp it up by reducing numbers of plants and grow time and maxing the yield per plant per month. Or maybe I'll be too happy and blessed with stash to care about all that.

    I will make this run as much "water only" as possible: literally no nutes or nothing unless the plants tell me they need it. If the soil shows some deficiencies, I'll try to worry about it next run, not react to every little thing. In other words, LVTFA as much as my fairly OCD self will allow.

    I decided to start this journal since Grasscity and many of you folks have been so helpful to me. As questions come up or you see me going a direction you think is dubious, feel free to jump in.

    The environment: 4' x4' x 8' high DIY cab using 1" EMT conduit and outside shelter connectors; R-matte foam board, mylar and panda film; split into a mother/nursery/veg half under T5 HO and a flower half under 600w Cooltube. There's a separate room nearby I'll use for quarantine and male pollen, assuming I try to collect any. All of it is in pretty tightly controlled heated and a/c'd space.

    HVAC: a 6" 493 CFM Fantech exhaust fan for the cooltube and the two chambers. DIY carbon filters on the room exhausts for the two chambers. Thermostat for fan, also a speed control, though the one I installed (a ceiling fan dimmer from Lowe's) isn't working other than as a switch, so I will replace with Fantech's own. Rotating tower fan in Ma (mother/nursery chamber) and two small clip ons in Ra (the flower chamber).

    Media: Vic's Super Soil, I think a pretty old recipe. When I started this I wasn't aware of Subcool's work updating that recipe. More on that later.

    Water: Rain barrel and a separate RO filtered tap inside. The public supply here is pretty good, soft water, but they use chloramines. I'll hand water, though by the time of my second run I want to have Tropf Blumats installed, since I have to be away for a day or two or three at a time pretty often.

    Genetics: For this first run, I have some regular Blue Thunder (MTF x Blueberry) from Sagarmatha; some fem'd Strawberry Diesel, a hybrid of Strawberry Cough and NYC Diesel; one fem'd Power Skunk seed from Kannabia; and some bag seed to compare to a friend's recent grow. I have 20+ strains of seeds I'd like to run in the next year, a real challenge in this small cabinet. I figure I can usually start about 8 - 12 seeds, depending on how many fem'd ones I use, shooting for no more than 6 plants at a time in flower and 9 in veg. I will clone everything that pops up until I find its sex and, for the females, quality. I may eventually run some crosses, so will probably take some pollen off promising males.

    Here's the starting lineup for this first grow in the new space: GermCups.jpg
     

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  2. So I just started with this recipe:

    [FONT=&quot]Vic's Super Soil:[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
    1 Bale sunshine mix #2 or promix (3.8 cu ft)
    8 cups Bone Meal - phosphorus source
    4 cups Blood Meal - nitrogen source
    1 1/3 cups Epsom salts - magnesium source
    3-4 cups dolomite lime -calcium source & pH buffering
    4 cups kelp meal.
    9kg (25 lbs) bag pure worm castings

    - Mix thoroughly, moisten, and let sit 1-2 weeks before use

    I used Promix BX, which is their peat-based product with "micorise pro," which I understood to be innoculated with mycorrhizal fungi. Now I have found there is the usual complexity, bordering at least on bullshit, that happens when you mix commerce, trademarks and marketing with things the consumer like me poorly understands...so exactly what is "micorise pro" isn't clear to me, but the results seem good: after a week, a lot of white fungal growth on the surface of my mixing basin, shown below in normal view and the mycelia at 160x.[/FONT]VicsSoilSurface.jpgvic's-soil-mycelia.jpg[FONT=&quot]

    I am hoping to learn from some of the pros in the organic grow section more about the details of this stuff. The interaction of the roots, the fungi and the soil space right around all that seems to me like the key to everything. There's a metaphor there but I'm not buzzed enough to grasp it at the moment.

    The only other variation I used on the recipe is that I used some calcitic lime, pelletized, that I had lying around here, instead of the powdered dolomitic product called for in the recipe. I hope this doesn't end up biting me on the ass. I hope not to have to worry too much about pH, but the risk is that the pellets don't give me an accurate reading of the soil pH going into the project, and it ends up being more alkaline than I had planned. The slurry starting out, with tap water at pH ~ 8.6, is ~ 7.2. That seems pretty good, assuming it drops over time. But we all know how assumptions make asses out of u.

    I started the seeds using the paper towel method, all but one popped in a couple days, and I planted them in the plastic cups in straight Promix BH.

    So far, so good, still so much to do getting the environment together, so I am really counting on this soil to take care of me and the plants while I worry about other things. I have been doing more research on the super soil recipe...I love the fact that it hails from Vic High, since I have a lot of admiration for BC, the BCGA, and the whole pac northwet thing. But I evidently have a couple of decades of catching up to do. I'll feel successful if this basic recipe gets me through to harvest, especially if I can get a fade at the end. Since I don't plan to push the plants really hard for max growth, I have some hope that even a basic super soil recipe will get me where I want to be in a few months. :cool:

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  3. Are there conventions here in GrassCity on how to count days in a grow? I don't think so...at least I see journals that say things like "12 days from seedling" or "five days into veg" and I don't really know what that means as far as exactly when the clock started. I guess I'll start with Day 0 being the day the beans first went in the moist (nonbleached) paper towels, day 1 as 24 hours later, etc etc, and starting another clock as it were when I go to 12/12. And I'll just fill in a few of the veg stage events, more to record how I dealt with various decisions in building, monitoring and trying to control this environment and how I might do it different next run than for anything else.

    I put the cups with the cracked beans under 24/0 flouros. Next time I will probably start the seeds directly in the cups, or perhaps in some peat pellets I have had sitting around for awhile.

    Ok, I also will be picking days and pics to post here for my sheer amusement, like I feel looking back at these little dicots and recalling the neverending thrill of seeing life push up out of the soil...here at Day 4..to me that's about as primally joyful as it gets.Gro1Seedlings.jpg
     

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  4. Howdy Marapa thanks for sharing your grow effort grow-bro. Reads like you are off to a great start and here are some good vibes tossed your way hoping it's a good 'un for ya!
     
  5. Many thanks, Possum. You are an inspiration to me, although I'm only about 1/3 of the way through your big grow thread in this forum. I read a little every night. Truly inspirational. In fact, I ran a little test for you back in November or early December under a different name, when I first registered and before deciding to post a journal. Here's a pic from that test ("Q: would peat be a good acidifier?") for posterity's sake. Or posteriors', whatever...keep up the great work and one day maybe you and Lumper and Chunk and Smoove can explain to me how this miraculous plant is really working down there below the surface...
     

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  6. Well kewl grow-bro. thanks again for doing the test with the peat. It's nice when kind folks chime in to help explore this and that!
     
  7. Everything I could find by way of trials and reviews of smart pots was positive, so I decided to use them for this grow. I got some 3 gal size and decided to go really "lazy-faire" by transplanting the seedlings from cups directly to the 3 gals for veg, and not doing any more transplanting all the way through. Shooting for ALASLAP--as low a stress level as possible.

    Below are the 3 gals sitting in my little veg area waiting for duty. I have built the cab so that I can rest the smart pots on stainless grid--like these shelves or, in the flower chamber, regular grid--with pans underneath to catch runoff, and most places the pans are removable in case I need to get all excess water out for humidity control. My theory is that this will let the plants air-prune roots not just on the sides but also on the bottom, thus also getting air in to the roots from all directions. I'm intrigued by Possum's experiment in Soma-style air wells, but I haven't studied Soma's methods yet and I'm hoping this use of smart pots on grids will be just as simple and effective.

    In my thinking about transplant and 3 gal pots, I didn't stop to consider how cramped my space really is on the veg/mother side. I'm using these shelves to try to take advantage of the 8' high vertical dimension; I have a little clone/germination area ("the nursery") underneath. In the future I will probably go from cups to 1 gal smart pots for veg, to save space, move rooted clones to 2 gal smart pots for mother plants and save the 3 gallons for flowering. That's my future plan, anyway; this one is going all the way through with 3 gal pots and they will just have to be cramped.

    I have a little background with bonsai so have some understanding of how root restriction works and doesn't work. My thinking on use of nothing bigger than 3 gal at this point is that I am not trying to grow huge plants, just super-healthy plants. When I get to smaller numbers of plants and bigger size goals down the road, I may size it up some.
     

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  8. Someone on one of the cannabis grow sites has a thread in which they claim it's possible to determine the sex of a cannabis seed by how perfectly round the scar is where the seed was attached to the ovary wall (the hilum). Supposedly the girls are perfectly round, the boys not so much. I'm dubious, but wouldn't it be great if it were so? so in the spirit of testing, I made pics of all the seeds I planted this time and made a prediction of their sex based on what I could make of their perfect little roundness.

    Just trying to see and photograph this made it obvious that "perfectly round" is a judgment call. Here are two of the Blue Thunder seeds I popped, one of which I called "round" and predicted "female", the other I called "not so much" and predicted male. Overall, though, I predict that this approach is a waste of time. Or at least that I don't have the eye for the girls when they're still in the seed...
     

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  9. "Verde, que te quiero verde....
    ...."


    "Green, how I want you, green...
    ....
    green wind, green branches.
    The two friends climbed up.
    The stiff wind left
    in their mouths, a strange taste
    of bile, of mint, and of basil
    My friend, where is she--tell me--
    where is your bitter girl?
    How many times she waited for you!

    ...

    ~Federico Garcia Lorca, Romance Sonambulo


    Day 9, all is well, just be patient, read poetry, whatever. So hard not to want to push these babies with extra stuff they don't really need. Will check real soon for roots and transplant as soon as it looks like they might be circling the bottom of the cup...



     

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  10. Holy Mudhead, Mackerel...it's already time to transplant! :D
     

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  11. Howdy Marapa,

    Those seedlings are looking great bro......looks like your grow is shifting into high gear.
    Welcome to Grasscity!

    chunk
     
  12. Thanks, Chunk. I'm still a little overwhelmed by how much content there is in GC. I haven't even worked my way all the way through any of the major ongoing org grow journals, like yours. But I'm chipping away at it.

    Same with this grow: chipping away. I chose a method that would, I hoped, be as low a stress level as possible on me and the plants, giving me plenty of time to observe, record, consider options before taking action, always including the do nothing option, letting me focus on tweaking the environmental structure, monitoring and controls available to me. So far, so good.

    In light of that hope I had decided to transplant straight from plastic seedling cups into 3 gal smart pots and then just leave the plants there for the duration. I also decided to use my full-on super soil in the 3 gal pots instead of stratifying with a layer of hot soil at the bottom and cooler non-fert'd soil around the seedling's roots. I want to see just how laz-e I can be; sort of like Jefferson, a great hemp farmer, said: That government is best which governs least.

    And so transplant with these smart pots went just fine, although I went kind of skimpy on filling them, perhaps leaving a little too much headspace. But we'll find out whether they crap out on nutrients in the end.
     

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  13. Marapa,

    GC has the info you'll need for sure......and the grow journals pages are a great place to hone techniques. Even though your growing organic this round, it's also helpful to check out the indoor journals. You can really get some good input on different grow rooms, SCROG techniques, LST and it's also cool to get to know other members.

    TBH, having the extra headspace is a plus as I've come to find out. I've been leaving a little extra myself as of late and it's left me room to top dress.

    I am a big proponent on the re-use of my soils, so on the second time around, I don't amend the soil with all the seed/marine meals. If I'm a month or so into the grow and the plant looks like she's getting a little hungry, I'll top dress with my seed meal mix and then cover with a layer of EWC.

    I've had them green up in a matter of days with this method. You can get the same results with just alfalfa meal, or fish meal or a combination of both. Make sure to add the kelp meal whatever way you go.

    You can also just top dress with straight EWC or compost, but make sure the compost is aged and not to hot.

    Good lookin' out bro,

    chunk
     
  14. Chunk,
    is there a summary or a concise discussion somewhere of the right methods for organic soil reuse? I can imagine that would be a contentious topic, but it makes sense to me that it could work. I've been careful not to add anything that could build up excess salts or toxins. Still I wonder whether you compost it? with or without additives? and whether you mix with fresh new soil, or not, when you use for another grow? And do you separate used soil from old root mass and residual plant matter, perhaps by sieving it, or just put all the biomass in together? So far I have not used any seed additives that I can recall, and just a few cups of kelp meal from the marine world. Thanks for any advice on this or for just pointing me to some useful threads...I have been so focused on building the grow structure that I haven't much through post-grow soil handling.
     
  15. Marapa,

    I'll post a couple of threads that talk about soil re-use at the end of this post. I've been re-using my soils for a couple of years now and if prepared properly, the secomd and third time around they're even better.

    I use the biggest tote that Rubbermaid makes. I'll empty a Smartpot, and smash down the root mass. I remove the "stump" and the bigger roots, then spread the soil over the entire tote. I sprinkle a layer of Bokashi and then wet down everything with an EM-1 solution. I repeat this until the tote is full.

    I put the lid on it and let it sit for 4-6 weeks. The Bokashi/Em-1 treatment begins an anaerobic composting process that breaks down the leftover roots and other organic material.

    About three days prior to using the soil, I apply an AACT to infuse the soil with beneficial bacteria/fungi. These beneficials (which are aerobic) feast on the anaerobic bacteria created by the Bokashi composting process.

    After about three days the soil is rich and earthy smelling and ready to go. I still like to add some fresh compost and/or EWC for good measure. I don't add seed/marine meals before re-use, but leave room to top dress if needed.

    As long as chemical/salt based fertilizers aren't used, the re-use of your soil is an important component in organic gardening.

    Here's a couple of threads:
    My Redux Soil Mix....

    [​IMG] Soil recycling thread

    cheers,

    chunk
     
  16. Chunk,

    very nice my man, muchas gracias...that info has me excited. I fully buy into the idea of long-term building of the soil. Thinking that way adds another level of goodness to this enterprise, from my point of view. I had planned to just chuck the residuals out into the woods in my backyard, but proper reuse is much better in every way, if I can pull it off.

    I have already been working on a super soil ver. 2.0 for use with the cuts I plan to take from the current grow--it just has some more acidifyers as well as some azomite compared to my basic 1.0 mix used in this grow (which is testing around pH 7.0 on a sludge test, and I'd rather drop that to ~ 6.5). So now your approach will get slotted in as my ver. 3.0 soil that I will hope to have ready in time for my next strains when they get transplanted. My current thinking on those strains is to run some longer flowering sativa-oriented ones, probably Reeferman's Harmony and Nirvana's Pure Power Plant.

    Years ago, when I last really took the time to spend on plants, I was reading some of the classic 19th and early 20th century english gardening writers. They were very big on the use of leaf mold ("mould" to them). I piled up a huge amount of oak leaves from the giant oaks behind and above me hoping to use the mold some day. It's now about 15 years later and I'll have to go scrounge around and see what's happened. Any advice on incorporation of composted oak leaves? Not to get too far afield here, but I also have a hankering for piney taste in weed, and have an endless supply of white pine needles that have been sitting and composting for decades. I wonder if there's any path for getting the terpenes that make pine smell like pine working for me in my own cannabis grows, with old pine mold. Probably a pipe dream...

    anyway, thanks for the great advice...:)
     
  17. As my nine seedlings start their journey to full-on cannabis leaves, it looks like the quick ones out of the sprouting box--Blue Thunder strain, Sagarmatha's cross of Matanuska Tundra with Blueberry--are also staying in the lead on development. All four of them are looking nice, consistent and green.

    I don't know the guy who runs Sagarmatha, though I saw him in a youtube that Urban Grower put up from this fall's Cannabis Cup and he gave a good interview--but my understanding is that he's one of those americans who left the US' bizarre cannabis oppression for the relative freedom of Amsterdam awhile back. Our loss.

    I count the two times I've been lucky enough to visit Sagarmatha itself--aka Chomolungma, the Mother Goddess of the Earth, aka Mt. Everest--as in every way peak lifetime experiences, so I'm very happy to have his seeds doing well. Among my other peak life experiences have been some times in Alaska, so I also very much dig the Matanuska side of these genetics.

    On the other hand, the Strawberry Diesels I have have been sketchy out of the box and continue to be a little twisted. The breeder himself seems to have vanished from the seedbank I used, making me wonder what's up. Perhaps like many creatures they will come into their own with time...
     

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  18. Morning Marapa. Saw that word Matanuska and it brough back a few fond memories of my time in AK. Matanuska Valley Thunder Fuck! Ahhhhh.... I recall fond memories of MTF!

    So hey man check this out. The oak leaf pile you have... that's good sheet mahn! Now I could go back digging around and dig up the link to the article I read on using oak leaves as a nutrient to grow agricultural crops but suffice it to say academic and farm studies have shown and proven that oak leaf matter used as a nutrient at the rate of 20 tons per acre produced startling and respectable results. That said...

    For "us types" oak leaves should probably best be thought of as a soil conditioner versus a nutrient source. Though the oak leaves def have nutrient value, arguably perhaps, their best use for the garden is as a soil conditioner/ammendment which results in an extremely areable and healthy soil. So use 'em brother. But here is what I suggest you consider.

    Use them from the bottom of the pile. The ones that are already black and decaying. And, if it's not really, really cold where you be, you will probably find and extrememly healthy earthworm population living right under the last layer. I've got a few methods to coax them out of the ground if you want to catch 'em and use 'em in your vermi-bin.

    Anyway, oak leaves specifically are a wonderful soil conditioner. They will decompose much more rapidly if chopped up into little bitty pieces because they have a fairly high C:N ratio. Adding some additional N to the compost pile with oak leaves will greatly speed up the decomposition process. The do have high levels of certain nutrients but N isn't on that list but P, K, Ca, and micronutrients are. Plus that mold you will see growing on them... muy bueno amigo! Good stuff mahn!

    The pine needles I recommend you stay away from. I've read quite a bit about their use in the garden and the best advice is to use something else. It's not because of the urban myth of "acidic quality" of pine needles, it's more related to their chemical composition, waxy external coating, and an extremely, long, long time to decompose because of the waxy coating. Move past 'em as there are much better natural amendments to add to your soil mix.

    G'day! :wave:
     
  19. Marapa,p38.

    I totally agree there.....not only do the needles take forever to break down, but when they do, the terpenes adversely affect the microorganisms in the compost pile [cite] for quite some time.

    I'm growing some ATF at the moment, so I can join in on your enthusiasm with the Alaskan strains.

    Be well my friends,

    chunk
     
  20. Chunk and Possuum,

    thanks for the oak and pine info. I guess I'll keep the pinene and other pine baddies out of my grows...or reserve them for the quarantine/test chamber I'm setting up, for pollen collection and plants that are headed straight to the great hash extractor in the sky anyway. I did a little research on pines as allelopathic and while there are clearly pine varieties that have that quality, there are also a lot of folks out there that think that applies only to fresh needles. There are even some empirical gardening results from pine mold that look pretty good. e.g. Zero Cost Organics versus Foliage Pro - Container Gardening Forum - GardenWeb[FONT=&quot]

    But why risk it? I'll stick with the oak mold...when and if the snow and ice ever melt. Future soil additives reports to come, with future runs, as I move more toward you soil additive activists.

    Meanwhile I'm still planning to push this grow through as a lazy-ass passivist with a no-shit water only approach, not just meaning no additional nutrients, but no additional nada, unless I see some problems. Still early, but so far, so good....
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