I am a noob as it would seem at soil growing... Finding it hard switching from hydro( what a tangled mess I have been in, had to recondition my brain from all that shit) feels great but I am terrible at watering! While I was attempting to dial my blumats for the first time, my babies got under watered for a week. I am not a confident man so in a manic like fashion I totally freaked and got back on the bottle Now I of course regret this and a week later I would like to try reclaim this soil back to its former glory and turn my first and only cbd plant into unbastarderized medicine like first planned. Plants were fed an ec of bout 1.1 I have worm casting that I made and I am a day away from having an sst ready also a alfalfa tea that is ready. I would prefer not to transplant if possible but I am open to suggestion but I do need to switch to flower tomorrow. Thanks for any help.
@[member="onlyhuman"] Congrat's on the switch my man! You won't regret it. I know that you don't want to transplant, but you may need to. You have a minimum of 8 weeks to go. You don't want your plant to become root bound. What sized pot are you growing in, and can you post a pic' of your plant?
Wow. Wasn't expecting a reply to this so soon thank you guys quote name="Gandalf_the_Green" post="20490113" timestamp="1408718856"]What type of soil are they in? What is "ec of 1.1"?[/quote] Hey gandalf the green soil is a home made mix. It has- 45% coco 15% perlite 12.5% rice hulls 15.5% ewc 12.5% compost Amendments per cubic foot- 1 cup alfalfa 1/2 cup neem 1/2 cup kelp 4 cups rock dust 1 cup zeolite 1/4 cup soft rock 1/4 cup gypsum I made it in january originally but put in a boat load of alfalfa, so i only use half when i plant and add fresh coco,perlite and ewc to get to the mix posted. Sorry with the "ec", half strength rate(2.5ml per litre) of dutch masters original nutrients with some silica added to tap water running through blumats. Hope that clears it up, i should have posted it originally sorry. Hello waktoo, thank you man It has been so fascinating learning from all you good people about organics.Its a thing of beauty to say the least! I just transplanted roughly 2 weeks ago from 1 gallon pots into 5 gallon fabric pots, but i will do what i have to do to turn this around. Bare with me on the pic waktoo, i will do my best give me a few hours mate. Thank you again guys
@[member="onlyhuman"] If you just transplanted to 5 gallon, you're good to go! Curious though, why did you go so heavy on the coco' for your soil base? It should be ~ 33% by volume, not 45%.
Awesome news man! Hmm I really don't know why 45% to tell you the truth :S From now on though I will mix to 33%, I plan on getting spaghnum peat and thinking of adding it to the coco mix but not sure how they get along and ratio etc. Got some pics here for you The second pic was taken under 2700k cfl. Oh this girl was sleeping to btw!
Here's my advice...take it for what it's worth. Mix up 50g of the following 25g peat moss 12.5g lava rock or pumice or perlite etc. 12.5 of compost or ewc quality is crucial here. Add 3 cups each of the following: oyster shell (fine, preferably pacific pearl) crab shell, neem meal, kelp meal for a total of 12 cups. Add 10 cups of glacial rock dust. Buy two 30g smart pots, fill the bottom of them enough so your transplants will be at the proper height in the pot, then slit the bottom on your 5g pots w/ a razor blade, next place them on top of the soil in the 30g smartie and make 4 slits up the sides of the 5g smartie, you can peel the sides down if there is enough root holding things together, or simply continue to fill the 30g w/ the soil mix you've made. I would just use this mix immediately, but I recommend allowing it breakdown for at least a week before use. More than likely you won't have to water at all for the first week other than to keep the top of the soil moist. So, it would be a good idea to use some sort of mulch. Check out some threads and see what's available for you. If you need help tweaking your soil mix because you can't find ingredients just let us know and we can help you out man. Good to see someone attempting organics. What I'm suggesting you do here could quite possibly put you in a water only situation. Save the blumats for later. It's just two plants.
Well, isn't that a pretty little gal'? Looks as if though your first foray into soil growin' is going well! She's DEFINATELY ready for flowering. Nice work. Regarding the use of sphagnum peat moss vs. coco as a component of your soil mix base, I will say that SPM is the better choice due to it's higher cation exchange capacity, or CEC. You will run into this reference a lot if you're reading much around the organic threads... CEC is basically the soil's ABILITY to adsorb and hold nutrients as they are made available by microbial breakdown. Once cations (the majority of "nutes" are positively charged) are adsorbed to the soil colloid (CEC), plants can adsorb said nutrients directly from what essentially should be considered to be the soil's "nutrient battery", the CEC. Higher CEC levels in soil correlate to higher nutrient availability (if it has been put into the mix, of course). The CEC also serves to buffer soil pH. One of the reasons why soil growers around these parts don't bother with monitoring and trying to adjust pH of water used to hydrate our plants... If you've paid even the slightest bit of attention as to what was being taught in the chemistry classes that you've taken in your lifetime, you might find this helpful in understanding what CEC is, and what it means to the health of living soils... http://www.soilminerals.com/Cation_Exchange_Simplified.htm Everything that you might learn here can be applied to ANY plant that you might want to cultivate. If you can learn to grow cannabis successfully indoors in a pot, you can apply the same knowledge (with a few tweeks!) to growing your own FOOD outdoors. We are being poisoned by "industry". Grow as much of your own as your personal situation will allow. Canna' and food... End rant before it begins...
Hey rancho deluxe, I dream of pots that big and I hope by Christmas I'll be able to have space for it How are the plants in 30 gal, you could veg for how long? For now I am stuck in a humble lil 2x4 tent! That mix sounds great though and I think I mentioned I will be getting some peat soon, the country I live in does not sell oyester or crab shell meal unfortunately any recipe for my own? Thanks for your help man and all the best with your grow Why thank you kind sir, she has been frolicking in the sun and rain for the past few days Thank you for your explanation of cec, i have not studied it as much as I should have but what you said makes perfect sense and will read the link soon enough. I messed up my education so I am learning a lot but i am slow and very out of depth in chemistry and what not... I must admit I have known coco is not quite what I was after but I settled due to availability of Canadian peat is tough in my country, plus that I thought it was more sustainable but that is a whole other story. But if I never have to rinse all the salt out of another block of coco again that alone would be worth it lol. Thank you waktoo and yes I am now transferring growing into other plants also now that they don't have to be grown hydro! Spring is 2 weeks away and have been getting ready for what we hope to be the start of a some what self sufficient lifestyle, life is good All the best mate
What country are you in mate? Can you list all ingredients that are difficult for you to find? If you'd like more soil and a more forgiving grow....check this out... Mine is 4'x4'x16'' it will hold 180g of soil. You can easily make it smaller. If I were to build another one, I would probably build it out of steel instead of wood. This is what it looks like a day or two into flower...pretty much the same soil mix I described to you. Water only throughout flower. Alfalfa/kelp tea at transplant and a little protekt in veg.
Nice grow man Just having a hard time finding crab meal, fish meal and oyster shell meal. Any marine meals basically. Might build one of those when I build a cab. Looks neat, cheers
Please don't take this the wrong way... How can you not find these things or their equivalent? You live on an ISLAND in the middle of the ocean. Do they not crab, fish, and harvest mollusks along the coast of the continent that you live on? Maybe these products are referred to differently where you live?
It's alright man, no harm I haven't sourced any in bags/buckets in garden ready form in my area or online is all I'm saying. I would be happy to make my own from marine life though!
So I forgot how good the search tool was here and that you can pretty much find what ever you need here using it. Found this very useful http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1241556-backyard-composting.html/page-33#entry19696792 Finally can turn all the flys we get here into a win! We have a native soldier fly called the garden sf which is very similar, might put this in a chook pen so they can eat the grubs a system produces.