These amendments are usually added in the new mix, or, as top dressings later in the grow. Sometimes, both. They are: Soy meal Alfalfa meal Neem/Karanja cake Bone meal Kelp meal Greensand Azomite Dolomite lime Gypsum Crustacean meal Base mix using 5gal buckets for rough measurements: Homer bucket full; expanded and screened Peat moss. Lamberts or Premier Homer bucket full; Perlite, regular or horticultural grade (same thing). Never the 'chunky', it works poorly for aeration/drainage. Homer bucket with ~2 gallons of VC from my worm bins. My VC is very dense and more than this will turn the mix muddy, VOE here. ~3 gallons of pine bark mulch, screened through 1/2" screen. This can be as little as 2gal if it's really fine, or closer to 3gal if larger. This is really a judgement call on the 2 ingredients, but rarely is the bucket filled, usually closer to 4 gallons. One tip I can offer is, I dump the peat moss first in the wheelbarrow, then the dolo second and mix well. I use the pulverized for this and it will turn the peat a greyish color when well mixed. I also use pellitized for outdoors or top dressing. Pellitized is just the powdered covered with a clay binder that dissolves with the first watering. Using the powdered outside with even a slight breeze becomes a one time learning experience. With everything added this gices you a bit more than 2cf, closer to 17/18 gallons, mainly because I like to go heavy on the aeration and use 40% as a starting point. Wet
I personally use both lime and gypsum. I like the extra calcium. Though not based on anything other than personal experience, I am convinced that sulfur in the gypsum really helps bring out the smells and tastes. I also have very little carbonates in my tap water, its almost like RO. I pretty much use the same recipe as wetdog, I just go about it a touch different and use leaf mold instead of peat. I have been getting 4 crops of autos out of my little 10 gal no till sips! Most recipes out there don't use bone meal (or fish bone meal) anymore, but I think its key. I can't say enough good thing about bark in a mix. Its cheap, easy to get, and checks off a lot of boxes in the usefulness department. Slowly but surely, there is more information coming out on 'fungal soils' being best. Ya need lignin to get there! I can't thank wetdog enough for getting me to start playing with bark in my vmc. I took it from there and ran with it! Those Florida container gardeners have been using bark in one form or another for years (nuggets or fines). cheers os
I'm really happy to see the OGs using bark, having chosen to add it to my mix as well based on some readings! I haven't added quite as much as you guys have, but I've got a batch cooking that I may just add some more based on what you all are saying!
@wetdog @Organic sinse The only bark fines in my area are sold as orchid bark, and it's a little expensive. Would pine bark soil conditioner be an acceptable substitute?
Ash bark is the main humus in Coast of Maine soil. Ash bark is great. I could see adding conifer mulch or even saw dust as long as you microwave it to make sure that your soil has includes just the bugs and microbes that you have intended. Nice share. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I never knew what pine bark brought to the table, never thought to ask and the guy who was teaching me the mix likely didn't know either. It was just "add a shovel full of those bark fines to the wheel barrow". I traded sweat labor making his mix to learn it. I was growing rare ferns and orchids then and just getting started, 1972. Left it out once ~2012 from *advice* on a MJ forum (too acidic), and ended up having to re-do the mix. I just listen to gardeners now and experienced gardeners at that. I'm using it more widely now thanks to your expanded use and experiments. Like the dolo and gypsum also and never noticed them to be antagonistic. Dolo for pH (Calcium Carbonate), and gypsum (Calcium Sulfate), usually added later as a top dress, for the sulfur, a bit of Ca and it doesn't affect pH. I learned about gypsum from growing garlic and then Coot mentioned it about a year later. Neem/Karanja. I FINALLY listened to some real OG's after turning some soil toxic (I think), after using it as my sole N source on a few pepper plants. Not adding a lot, but adding it constantly. The other pepper plants just got Soy meal for top dressings, in a SxS experiment. Now, my max is 1 light cup/cf when making a fresh mix. One thing I noticed is, the cake in a fresh mix has little effect on bugs, but the next season there were next to zero bugs attacking my plants. Guess it needs a year to really start working. IDK Wet
Should be. Depends on cost and if there is anything added besides the bark. Around here (SC), it is so cheap (~$2.50/2cf), because of the literally hundreds of sq miles of farmed pines for either pulp wood or timber. I think they charge so little just to cover the cost of bagging it and shipping just to get rid of it. Try a bag and see if the cost isn't outrageous. Read the back first for anything that isn't pine bark. Wet
Thanks for clarifying the soy meal and explaining everything so clearly wetdog. I try to source as much as possible locally. I top dress with Stinging nettles. I harvest, dry and screen to a course powder or meal. It is my secondary nitrogen source and adds a bit more potassium too. You and Organic sinse have me convinced to add bark to my next mix as well as my worm bins. Do you foresee any issues with harvesting ASH tree bark. The emerald ash borer beetles devastated them on our property. I have access to lots of it. I will run it through my chipper with a course screen in it. It should give me 1/2-3/4" chips. Thank's again for sharing your knowledge.
AFA amounts go, just from experience I've gone to the 'less is more' mindset. Pretty much everything added to a fresh mix is 1cup/cf or less and not everything I listed goes into the fresh mix. For example, I add alfalfa to the fresh mix to kickstart it, but rarely top dress with it. Soy meal with it's higher N, I've found to be a very gentle top dress and mainly gets used for a quick shot of N. Also use blood meal, but only once in early spring for garlic that has overwintered. It does a huge amount of growth in those few months before harvest in late June. It is used just for that one application. For the minerals (Azomite, Greensand), I keep at 1cup/cf with perhaps a scootch more with the greensand. I love it, but Lord it is slow, I only reapply to my soil garden every 3 years, but the benefits are well worth it. Works very well with the kelp meal. HTH Wet
Pine bark soil conditioner is most likely pine bark that has been allowed to compost partially. It sounds ideal to me. If I could get the conditioner, I would use it with pine bark. Then you get “a little now, a little for later”. That’s really the key to good soil life, a perpetual cycle. This may seem pretty profound, but this is what I believe, and practice. I am convinced that when you get things going at the microbe level, it’s best to have the same food source available continuously. Then the micro life isn’t changing gears and looking for different food, just more of the same. For instance. In the beginning your soil life will feed off your composted bark. (In my case, I run bark thru the worm bin to accomplish this.) Later, the fresher bark In the mix will begin to breakdown and become food. Even later, bark mulch on top works it’s way into the food chain. The lignin in the bark becomes free carbon, which is extremely important to plant growth. Everything needs carbon to grow, and it doesn’t all just come from the air. If you keep that fungal chain happening, the bacteria seem swift to go in and take care of the rest. Of course there are other food sources in our mixes to give us diversity. I think that calcium and carbon, are the two most under appreciated elements in gardening. Get that right, and the rest falls into place. cheers Os
No, it is broadcast as is the Comfrey bed. Both are raised bed soil gardens, not containers. The soil underneith the leaf mulch is red clay and pretty mineral rich as is. Wet
*I* feel that the 2 most overlooked/neglected soil amendments are both pine bark and Greensand. Both bring so much to the table, but you hardly see either mentioned in any recipe, Greensand especially. I'm with OS on the fungal aspects of a soil mix and it's a good day when I find a bag of pine bark mulch that's nearly white with mycellium. No one else wants it, but it's like gold to me. I've only been using Greensand for about 10 years now, but, WOW. The slow release of K plus the other minerals it has keeps me from over applying the Kelp meal and lockouts. They work very well with each other, especially if you reuse your soil. Like OS, my tap water is nearly RO with an average of 38 PPM. So, any effects are from what I add and not from dissolved solids in the water. Makes it a whole lot easier to see results from what I do or don't use. Wet
I've seen *some* people use it, but not many here. And I've seen disagreement about whether it does/doesn't actually contribute K, as "it takes so long to break down." But 10 years, man, I'm SURE you'd see results from that time frame. Methinks that the folks who complain about "no contribution" of most of the amendments are not doing actual no-till, with the long-term mindset the goes along with it.
Thanks, Wet. This will be my third rear with greensand in my soil (4c.f holes). My soil mixes from here on out will contain greensand. D I didn't really notice any difference the first year but last year and the start of this year ( so far) nice healthy looking plants. This fall I'll broadcast some on the top of my holes and what the fall rains don't get the spring thaw will.
Patience is a requirement in organics. Luckily, starting out with orchids and having to sometimes wait 5 years for a seedling (lack of $$$), to show it's first bloom forced patience on you. A mature plant could easily be 10x+ the cost of a seedling. LOL, at age 65 I bought 2 Chestnut saplings knowing full well it would be at least 5 years before I saw the first Chestnut. I got 3 Chestnuts the fifth year and over 40 last year. They are setting fruit right now, so we'll see. Billions were wiped out in the 1920's when the Ag dept imported some Chinese trees for breeding, but carrying a bight that the American Chestnuts had no immunity to. Years later, a very isolated stand was found that WAS immune and my trees are descended from those. But, needing to be grown from seed it's been a slow process, but picking up. Estimated that 28 Billion trees were wiped out from the bight along with the huge food source they provided both to wildlife and people. If one has a bit of land for 2 (they don't self pollinate), and would like to help re-establish them, google "Chestnut Hill Tree farm" for more info. They're pretty trees to boot. Plus, you can do the whole "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" thing. It's a worthwhile endevor. Wet
I have a couple of raised garden beds that I want to add greensand to for the first time. Could I top dress with it this fall @ 1 cup a c.f and scratch it in and let mother nature do the work? Or should I remove the soil and mix it in?