Iv'e heard that organic growing can be harder to do. I have 2 bags of Just Natural organic mix. I'm new to all of this still pretty much so i'm worried about aeration. Should i add in some pearlite when i transplant from the plastic cups? I don't have any nutes or anything and still need a PH kit.
Yes get a huge bag of pearlite and mix it with your soil. You should be good. you don't need nuts until your plant shows that it needs it.. you should probably invest in super thrive also
"Organic" soil, and fertilizers can be just as much of a pain as salt based ferts, but it is harder to burn your plants. However, "Organic" soil, following the notill method, is not only the easiest and least attention demanding, but can also produce the most aromatic and flavorful buds IF your willing to sacrafice a fraction of the yield. Getting hydro yields is the pro level of organics, im not quite there yet. As for airation.... HELL to the no! on the perlite. It will just end up floating to the top of your soil. I recomend lava rock or grostones. Rice hulls are great, and are rich in silica! But they break down into organic matter in 6 months, so not the best for airation in something as permanent as notill. lovin u (=
mix your soil, drop some plants in it. once a week top dress with malted barely powder. watch your plants grow. lower yields? i heard of this myth if you want to learn how EASY it is check out the No-Till thread. it has all the info you need to get started.
perlite isnt the best but it works. in fact many organic growers use it in their mix. i think @wetdog does without problems. yes some will eventually float to the top but most of it will stay in the soil. get lava rock or pumice if you can but perlite can work almost as good if you cant get those.
If you wing it and try and plant in the bags of "organic mix" that you have and expect great results you'll most likely be sorely disappointed. Go and start reading the "Easy Organic Soil Mix" thread and the "No Till Gardening" threads before you think of starting. Then you won't need "nutes" or a pH test kit. J
Yeah and u can reuse your soil if u do the notill recipe, that's my favorite part, lol. And personally, my yields have been far bigger since switching to notill Sent from my XT1254 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
I use perlite. I mix my soil every round and use SIPs so I never have any issues with it rising to the top. I could imagine in a situation where you replant in the same pot and use a garden hose to blast your soil with water that the perlite in the top half of the pot would eventually aggregate to the top. Perlite is just a million times lighter than lava rock, so I use the rock in my SIP trays and now the perlite in my pots. But I do hold my breath whenever I'm mixing. And organics is all about putting the work in on the front-end, so at the very beginning do a lot of shit, then it's EZ street after that. Jerry and I peek in our rooms about only 2x a week and that's to water and perform IPM.
IMO "perlite rising to the top of soil" isn't really even a thing. Yes, a little may happen to the top inch but other than that your soil and root structure holds everything together anyhow. It's pretty much an old wives tale. Mulch easily takes care of this. Buckwheat hulls, cocoa hulls and rice hulls are another good option for lightweight aeration. I don't see pumice available here in the northeast and I'm getting too old to be adding even more weight in the form or rocks whether it's lava rock or not. I use leaf mold as the basis for my soil and don't need to add extra aeration due to the leaf molds natural draining ability. J
Wolfmoon Skip the PH kit-test as you really won't need it.. I'm a huge fan of perlite as I'm to old to be lifting any rocks in my soil mix.. A full tray of wet plants is all I can stagger under and that's with a very light mix with 1/3 or more perlite . What you will need is some quality compost and don't just buy the first bag you see with compost on the front.. Most is crap and should be marked mulch as that's what it really is having zero composting time in my opinion.. Bu's blend of Biodynamic, Coast of Maine Lobster Compost, A distant third is ecoscraps from Home Depot if your out west.. This is the heart and soul of your soil and skimping here will show very quickly.. Like wetdog my aeration component is and will continue to be perlite.. I run a mix of both till and no-till where I have a big enough site and after the first couple of months that perlite float stops or you just rake off what is up top and toss it back on the out of use soil pile and it gets mixed in next round of transplants.. BNW
Fixed it for you Scoob. My biggest bitch with the 'rocks' is with noobs who, A. Don't crunch it small enough to work well and B. Don't use enough for proper aeration, like, buying one bag and calling it good. Far too many simply have no idea how a well aerated mix should perform or drain and end up with poor drainage and a too dense mix. Before you can make a well draining/aerated mix using whatever you need to know how it should perform when finished. I do use lava rock in my raised bed gardens, but not in my mixes because, A. The PITA crunching it up. B. The weight, such as it is and C. The biggest, it tears up my hands when digging in the mix. I have my hands 'in the shit' a LOT and taking blood thinners bleed really easily. For me, not using it is mostly age/health related and I do use other aeration amendments besides perlite, mainly pine bark fines and rotted wood chunks. A variety works well, better than using just one. Yeah, the front end work is just that, work. But after that, top dressings and water suffice for 3 years or so, at least for the no tills (anything too heavy for me to pick up). Containers under 5 gallons get dumped in a trash can to be reamended later. Homer buckets can go either way, depending on what was in them. Steve is exactly right, a big output of effort at first, then pretty much just watching the plants grow. Wet
You guys rock! Im still a tad biased towards perlite, but now i wont be "warning" other people about it lol. Hey jerry, have u ever tried grostones? Theyre working great for me (i use a 50/50 growstone lava rock mix). I find them to be incredibly light weight, good at draining and holding oxygen, and theyre made of silica. Anyone else have any experience with grostones? lovin u (=
I personally try and garden these days with little to no cost so Gro stones would just be something to buy. But if it works good for you and you're happy with the results then do it - it ain't rocket science; it's a garden so do what makes you and your plants happy and comfortable through trial and error. Peas J
For sure, i just thought id mention it, since you said you dont use rocks because theyre heavy lovin u (=
I was sold a broken open bag of growstones for almost nothing once. I liked them alot. They don't breakdown nowhere near perlite or float to the top as bad. But you're also paying for grow shop hype. Overpriced environmentally friendly recyled glass if i remember correctly. I avoid grow shops and online grow shops as much as possible except for the necessities like lights. Its just a weed and doesn't need fancy named products to grow good. If it came down to growstones or perlite just based on performance alone, growstones all the way. Blows perlite out of the water. It was a few years ago and I can still see a bunch of it in my pots. I have a bunch of different aerition amendments in my soil. I don't know who said organic was harder but they were going about it in a difficult manner or need their head examined
Hell no bro. Go to the thread I believe was posted earlier about making your own soil. Follow the recipe, throw in some quality compost and it doesn't get any easier. Sit back, water and relax. I don't even really measure anymore. Eyeball works. Handful of this, shovel of that. I spent years growing with bottled nutes because that's what the growers around here mainly use and that's what I was shown. I travel alot and am hardly home sometimes. My grow was more difficult before the ease of a well amended organic living soil. I so wish I would of started out organic
Easy Organic Soil Mix for Beginners This thread. Sorry man there was another thread posted earlier Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
the only thing that might be harder on a beginner is to find to correct information. google "how to grow organic cannabis" and the first hit is that annoying groyourgreens guy, his videos are more infomercials then actual knowledge. then you might find out about organic bottled nutes, supersoils, hydro using AACT (seen that) and all sorts of crap. by the time you land on a site with good information (if you haven't given up yet) you probably already went through a grow or two and spent time and money getting mediocre results. IMO if everyone who did a search for how to grow cannabis would land in the no-till thread all the hydro stores would have been long gone from the world.