Hi guys, so honestly where I'm from, hydroponic stores do not exist, hell the only headshop on the island is an online headshop due to permits being almost impossible to get. Anyway I've found a good(ish) centre which had a few of the things I needed and this is what I came up with after some searching. 5L Farm Manure - Blend of farm yard manure and gro-active sustainable composted natural material. 10L High quality white peat Dung organic fertilizer - NPK organic mineral fert, containing magnesium & sulphur 5L General Compost 2.25kg Fish, Blood & Bone - All Purpose Organic Plant Food(4-7-4) Vermiculite - No weight available, although the bag is the size of the 5L compost bags. (x2) Now, I know it's nothing like the organic mixes that are posted here, but resources are very limited, I intended on going with 'proper' fertilizers, but there's only one fertilizer with good ratios available and the quality is SO BAD. So here I am, hoping to go organic with these limited materials and was wondering if someone could help me with the ratios of the materials so I can begin cooking. I have 2 weeks to cook the soil, 3 tops. Babies are in small plastic cups and once I see they're ready to transplant I'll have no other option but to move into the soil, uncooked or not. Edit : May I also add that I have tried to find EWC but am unable, I'm off to a nearby petshop to see if they have some sort of worm castings Update : EWC still not available, people in garden stores/centers haven't a clue what rock dust is so that tells me alot about how professional the employees are! Here is the mixture I settled on. 5L White Peat 5L Farm Manure Compost 1/2 cup of dung organic fertilizer(mind you this is in pellets, which I didn't state before) 3/4 cup of Fish/Blood/Bone organic fert(dry powder) both bags of vermiculite (size of 5L compost bag, you get the image) 1 bag of perlite(same size as vermiculite) 2 cups general compost Moisturized till it felt like a wet sponge(not soaked), clumps together if I squeeze it, still crumbles easily.
I was hoping I could, the owner seems to have an affinity for worms in general. All he really had was pots, perlite & low-grade compost. Unfortunately online shopping isn't an option (not to mention, so very tight on money at the moment). Would this work for the time being and maybe brew some sort of organic tea to add later on? Oh yeah, I'm from sunny Malta, where prices on almost any drug are higher than almost anywhere else!
Picture 1 : Babies under 2 26w CFLs in normal potting soil with about 15/85 perlite, thought i'd see how well 15/85 does at draining, not very well to say the least, but they seem to be growing okay Picture 2 : Dung fertilizer pellets? Picture 3 : End product of organic mix Update : I'll start logging these babies on here so everyone can see what my results would be with these simple materials.
The mix smells just like after a good rain when all the earthworms and squiggling around on the top and all you can smell is rich soil in the air. Babies seem to have had a small growth spurt during sleep time. edit : Organic mix was feeling a bit dry this morning added some more water and mixed it for a while. On a plus note, it drained the water very well which is always a good thing
This country was practically built with limestone, so with a little work I managed to get a 1cup of limestone powder and added it to the mixture Here's one of the babies and one rising up. They're in regular potting soil at the moment