Cooking Soil Question

The simplest solution, being a noob, is to forget the 'basic' mix for the moment. Get yourself a small bag of seed starting mix, any brand. This will do fine for the seeds and the first couple weeks of growth. It also eliminates the probability of you getting the 'basic' mix too hot for seeds. Should cost less than $5.

Make your amended mix 2 -3 weeks before you plant the seeds. In party cups with drainage, or similar with drainage. No paper towels, please, plant directly into the mix.

When they are ready to transplant, in 2-3 weeks, your amended mix has been cooking a month. Transplant the entire contents of the cup, as is. Don't try and remove any of the starter mix. Slide it out of the cup and into the larger pot.

Simple, no?

Cd

 

Generally, be gentle. I have a pretty well cycled soil and I started seeds directly in that. After a couple, three weeks I'll transplant into larger pots after letting the cups get a little on the dry side. Makes the root ball easier to get out. That gets misted with a little water so the mychorizal spores will stick and into the next pot she goes.

 

I've found a blend of 9 parts sphagnum peat moss and 1 part vermicompost (plus a small amount of lime) to work well in seed starting.
 
I make it along the same lines still but add 1 part rice hulls and lightly amend with a bit of kelp, mostly because I make a batch and it sits for a while before it all gets used up. 
 
I prefer to use it for both cloning and seed starting over the peat pods commercially available. I didnt (and dont) like how the Root Riot brand plugs take ages to decompose so I switched without a problem. 

 

you can also put your amended mix at the bottom third of your pots this way the plant grows into a soil layer with nutrients when its bigger

 

Just be reaaaally careful doing it that way, cannabis when transplanted the roots "shoot" to the bottom of the pot first. If it's not broken down enough of cooked enough it can burn the roots.
Personally i'd avoid that method.
I like my mix to be all the same, after all in the natural environment its actually the topsoil that has the nutrients in it, not the bottom. SO I like to have it all mixed the same.
But for seedlings, that taproot will go to the bottom and then out, so i'd be really careful with an amended soil if it's not aged.

 

I guess I haven't really thought of this in small container farming, but I use such big containers by the time the root is hitting the hot zone the plant is mature enough to be there.

 

sure, you are totally right, all of the soil will have nutrients in them, but my point was the topsoil has the majority, not the deep soil. Not sure why some like to do it that way.

 

I gotcha, but isn't that sorta like the "chicken before the egg" argument?
I mean, its the leaves and decaying life that falls and decays and replenishes the soil, but yet the plant/tree must have substantial enough nutrients to grow in the first place....
Ahhhh I love how mother nature operates.
Cool discussion, and dare I say, sort of a cliché stoner type.. 

 

 
If you had said 'minerals' instead of 'nutrients', that would have made a lot more sense.
 
How much organic, decaying material is down deep? Not much. Likewise, minerals are not as abundant in the topsoil without those deep tap roots pulling them up from down deep.
 
Neat how it all works together.
 
Wet

 

Soil fauna takes nutrients into the soil. As well flora deposits nutrients as roots die and decay.