Got it, thanks alot. I'll be patient and give it some mbp or kelp. How much would you add per gallon?
Yes , I have one plant finishing in regular soil. I am going to start some seeds I. Regular soil so I can have some more practice so it’s not rush with the no till. I live in zone 10 so our grow season literally is all year for gh grows. I want to get all the experience I can. I have experience growing some difficult plants ( non cannabis ) for years now and even crossed my own cultivars. I just got sick of buying cannabis that I knew had pesticides. All of the shops only test for potency which sucks. The no tills I have in the gh are in 10 gallon pots the same as the one in my grow tent. I haven’t had much success with fabric pots my area is hot and dry and we have constant wind or breezes. I was thinking about adding vermiculite to the mix to hold some water in there not unless you have another suggestion ? I really wanted to get an olla in there and see how that would do. I have 15 gallon pots that are empty and wanted to try it with the photoperiods. All of my fabric pots are from grassroots. I have two 8x16 fabric grow beds by them and those will be for something else not the cannabis. The company really has some good products. The only complaint is the standard round fabric pots don’t have handles lol. Here is a pic of the growstone It’s really light weight and porous. It is very extremely hard finding pumice which I know a lot of people suggest. I can buy perlite but I had this bag of growstone going to waste.
@JGrewbie In a perfect world, 1 would soak 1 Tablespoon of kelp in 1 gallon of water for 24 hours. Then add 2-3 Tablespoons of mbp (I measure mbp before I put it in the coffee grinder) and let it soak for 2 more hours. If you have aloe, you can add 1/2 teaspoon of 200x or some plant gel. You could also add 1 Tablespoon of fulpower if you have it. Then I would strain, and foliar spray. What is left after they foliar, use as a soil drench. The dregs from the tea can be top dressed (preferred) or fed to your worms if you have a bin. Keep up the good work! cheers os
I am not a fan of vermiculite for cannabis. The growstones look they would work fine. I would try and break them up just a little smaller for the seed starter. Fill a sock and smack it with a hammer, you don't need much, it wont be that much work. Its just fine that your pots aren't fabric, I was just trying to remember the big picture. If it is hot and dry, you are probably better off with hard pots. I really like the 'no till' soil mix shown in the first post of the 'no till revisited thread. I always add bonemeal to it. hth os
I don’t have nightcrawlers I have red wiggler. when I dug maybe 5 inches down in the middle I don’t see anything. The mixed seemed dry but it’s hard to keep watering daily and thinking that I’m killing the worms lol but I guess they died anyways. In the gh they are under my shade cloth so they wouldn’t burn up. My mix was equal parts compost , peat moss and growstone since I didn’t have any pumice or perlite. I added basalt , bio char , neem seed meal, kelp meal, and gypsum. Then have the clover as cover crop. I am going to see if I can find lava rock. A lot of these things are expensive in my area or hard to find. Do you think I can swap lave rocks with clay pebbles ? I have a huge bag going to waste and if I can add this to the bottom instead of buying lava rock this would be great. In the mean time I am going to buy a bag soil and do some regular grows organically of course. Thanks for the reply. I am taking screen shots of what organic sense is posting it’s hard reading all this info and finding the info through this long thread.
Thank you I will empty my fabric pots and put the mix in my plastic pots I have. The mixed I used for my soil was from MO ( the poster of that thread) I follow them on Ig and emailed them. I added the other amendments via another recipe I found on YouTube ( I saw the same recipe posted on forums as well. Let me get the break down because I forgot how much of what I added brb
So I can’t find the other recipe at the moment but I wanted to post about what I have available if this may help with any substitutions. 1. I have lots and lots of free mulch mainly eucalyptus and some pine but it’s mostly eucalyptus. Two oak slabs that I want to make into biochar 2. Growstone ( a small bit left ) Lots of old soil mixed with growstone from oil pots I want to revive. 3. I have mountain organics sprout tonic 4. Compost I have is llama manure and I got a bunch for free. I can get nearly any kind of compost in my area for free via cow , llama , rabbit , horse etc 5. Huge bag of hydroton clay pebbles 6. Bag of alfalfa hay 7. Two bags of rye grain 8. I still have all the other amendments I listed minus the basalt 9. Lastly I have two tumbler compost bins going right now. I added old soil and started to add kitchen scraps to it. I forget to turn into some times but I am getting it going by adding water ( since it’s hot where I’m at )
Ok sorry for all these posts. I went into the greenhouse and pulled out some clovers and found some worms or a worm at the top of the soil and then the other pot was filled with clover I ripped a much out and found one worm in the middle under the roots. I checked the moisture and added water and just put more mulch on top. I will stick to these pots since I see the worms. I think I just put way too many clover seed in them an the worms couldn’t reach the surface on one pot. I am going to look at the one in my row tent and see what I find wish me luck.
Just an FYI, if there were worms and they were happy but died or left, there will be cocoons. The cocoons will hatch when the moisture returns. Don't worry about the worms too much. The mountain organics mix is great. I have heard that Llama manure is one of the very best. I actually tried using hydroton in a plastic pot with the screen on top (instead of lava rock), it worked fine. It was just expensive compared to lava rock. I pay around $6 for 1/2 cu ft of lava rock. Its hard to beat. It sounds like all you need is a little seed starter and we will have you growing again. cheers os
I dug up the one inside too and found a worm. I notice with all three pots the soil seemed tight not light and airy. I think I will add more growstone or perlite for aeration. The worms maybe having a hard time moving through the tight soil. What do you think ? Again this whole thread is full of info and I thank you. I can on this forum because I knew their has to be someone out there that is growing autos using no till method
@Autoqueen25 Watch out when ya get me talking about worms I can get carried away pretty fast. Speaking of which, I post a lot of stuff over in the thread "Converting to Vermiculture based gardening" in this forum. It kind of connects a few dots as to what I have going on and how it all fits together. But anyway, the worms definitely like damp soil. I feel they like aeration so much, I use it in my worm bins. It works slick. When you are new to a soil mix, I always would rather have too much aeration, than not enough. It really helps to prevent overwatering young plants in the large containers that I start seeds in. That's another reason for having a good light seedstarter in the middle. I am very fond of using rice hulls as the aeration in my latest seedstarter recipes. cheers os
So today I had time to redo one pot I had. I found the worms and they where at the top. I guess I really needed to water the pots more. I decided to go ahead and put the soil and worms in a plastic container. So I poured one of the fabric 10 gallon pot in my kitty pool I use for mixing. There were a lot of spots that were so tight and compacted and lots of dry hard areas. I managed to get the worms out with care. ( yeah I sat on the floor picking them out because I care hahah I couldn’t help it I didn’t want to kill the poor things) anyways I put the worms in an empty pot I filled with damp peat moss while I remixed the soil. So I didn’t take pic of the soil after I mixed in more grow stone. I really hope I didn’t add too much. I eye balled it. Here is a pic of before I added more growstone. This pic was also after I broke all the tight spots apart. I also saw that a lot of the llama manure was rock hard because it wasn’t moister to break down. I will take pics of the pots tomorrow. My phone died and it’s dark now. Again I am so happy I found this thread. So much great info here.
The worst that would realistically happen with too much grow stone, is you may need to water more frequently. I always err on the side of too much, so you are on point there. I was talking with a good friend last night about this exact thing. We have moved from 33%, to 40%, to 40% plus some that breaks down with time (like rice hulls). I always say if it looks there is too much aeration, that it is probably correct. That's one thing about bagged mixes with the exception of seed starter. They don't add enough perlite, because they think people will bitch about paying big money for soil that looks like its 1/3 perlite. I also try to pick out as many worms as I can when I physically mix soils like that. I am sure the worms thank us for that. I don't stress about picking out the real little guys, just the ones that I can grab easily. Great luck, and keep it up. cheers os
Can you elaborate on your top dress procedure? I assume you put 1-2 inches of your VMC on top, but is there anything else? Thanks, toaster
I apply an inch or 2 of my vmc. If the mulch is big, I pull it back, if its small stuff I just cover it up. Ex- Straw I would pull back, rice hulls or small broken leaf bits I would just cover. Don't over think it. There really is no wrong way. Small stuff I just cover because its not practical to remove. Large stuff that is easy to move, I will remove, top dress and replace. If there is something special I want to add to the pots as a top dress, I mix into the vmc before applying. For example at the start of flowering when I top dress, I may want to add bonemeal. For me it is easier to mix the bonemeal well into the vmc before top dressing, than to sprinkle it on top of the bare soil. hth Cheers os
What rate do you recommend to apply amendments as a top dress, maybe 25% of the recommended starting amounts? I never added neem, crab, bonemeal or gypsum to my original mix, and now that I have them I want to top dress them. What kind of rate should I apply them at? Or maybe just completely remix?
In my experience, the limit to top dressing amendments comes from the fact that they turn crusty and hard when too much is used. If you are in between grows, I would remix (I cup per cu ft for crab and neem, and 1/2 cup for bonemeal and gypsum.) If not scratch a couple tablespoons of an amendment in the top each week. You could also mix whatever amendments you wanted into vmc, peat, recycled soil, compost, or whatever and apply that as a top dress. If you do it this way, I would limit each of the amendments you listed to 2 Tablespoons per gallon of top dress medium(1/2 cup total per gallon). Then repeat next week if you have room. You don't need a lot of gypsum, so after 2 times, I would quit adding it to this grow. hth cheers os
Here are the pics guys, I finally finished. ( I was waiting for it to not be hot outside lol ) So my results and findings. The first fabric pot I re did had more clovers ( the most ) and had more worms in there. The thing though was that I didn’t see a lot of break down at the bottom but the roots of the clovers went deep. I had so many worms in that one I split them up to put in the two new 7 gallons I created ( plastic pots). I also noticed with that one I didn’t a lot of baby worms. The last two fabric pots had less clovers and one was inside my grow tent. The other in the greenhouse like one with the most clovers. So the one inside the gh had worms but far less. I saw baby worms and I can see a lot of dry spots caked up. I also saw that the chunks of soil that was moist with worms had less aeration. The one from my grow tent was interesting. This one almost had an even moisture content but as I got to the bottom it was so caked together. I noticed when I was breaking it away it was nice and fluffy and soft so this one was decomposing. In the cake mass I didn’t see a lot of full llama manure. I also saw lots of baby worms in that one but this had probably the least amount of worms of the three. I made three 7 gallon no-tills for the autos and one large ( I believe 15-20 gal) for a photoperiod.