This thread is a place to help me organize my thoughts and hopefully receive some help from the more experienced growers as I do. I have ordered beans from highgrade seeds and they are due to arrive within the week, So i need to start with my soil base now so that it can sit fro a week or two before planting my young plants. will be growing big blue and white widow. will be looking to start with sunshine growers organic mix and simple add some worm castings, dont have my own so hopefully i can source some good quality ones, apparently up in canada we only feed the worms paper. Assuming i cant source the organic sunshine growers mix I will likely use Pro mix EWC Pumice vermiculite wetting agent (what do I use?) soil ammendments I have in mind (im trying to KISS, atleast for right now) are Kelp meal Fish meal N fish bone meal P alfalfa meal humic acid some sort of rock dust crustation or some sort will use Kelp and fish enzymne for weekly feeding through growth. But today im looking to source out and purchase everything for my base soil, so i need any ammendments right away or do i wait to innoculate with tea once it has been composting for a week or two? any advice or if i have overlooked anything crutial i would appreciate all the help i can get, Im reading and learning as fast as i can!
I would recommend you get and use kelp meal, that is my top soil amendment, bar none. If you still have to get humic acid get a good one, rather than thinned out hydro store humic acid. And you have a large hole in your mix without humus, get you some ewc and or compost......miw
Thank you for being the first person to ever post on my thread! Kelp meal added to help promote fungi growth, thank you! Do I add ammendments to my base soil Immediatly or do I just let my EWC and sopilesss mix sit together until I am ready to use it. I need to use the mix for seedlings and I dont want to burn them, I cant find alot of info about soil mixes for young plants (under 4 weeks). I assume I just run a totally soiless mix and plain water, any thoughts.
I would mix it up and let it sit for one month. That allows the microbes to eat and store important nutrients that will be able for plants to use later. You could call that cooking, composting, resting or whatever but you get my drift. You won't need much for seedlings, pro mix with a little ewc will do just fine for their first three weeks or so. Once they establish a good root system they will be able to handle your mixed soil....MIW
GodofWar, On the wetting agent question, when a soil manufacturer adds a wetting agent, they more than likely use yucca root extract. I'm not sure if Pro-Mix amends there soils with a wetting agent or not, but you can get yucca extract at Whole Foods or other health food stores. You can also order online at Mountain Rose Herbs and it's fairly cheap. Welcome to Grasscity, chunk
thanks guys I was looking at pro mix and they do have a wetting agent, but i found the sunshine organic mix so ill use that. Worm castings arent hard to come buy, but they are all made in canada and from what ive read thats not such a good thing. hard to find good quality castings cause there is so little information about them on the bags label i really cant be sure if im purchasing junk or not! Ill keep looking.