Alright guys, have followed here on Grasscity for years, just never posted. Am a fan of several organic and no-till mixes. Clackamas, Subcool, The Rev, etc. All good info IMO. I've had a fair amount of success in both organic indoor and outdoor, but have thrown together a new batch that is currently composting, for the next couple weeks, then will be CEC, NPK, PH tested, and if all tests are good, will be throwing several ladies in it to see how they do. The Vegging blend we do is very similar, except reduced amounts and differences in certain inputs, all inputs are sourced organic. I also tend to blend what I consider a little "lighter" than what some others would say and have had very good results. This is for a cubic yard of soil. Base: 1/3 Sphagnum Peat 1/3 Perlite 1/6 (120lbs) EarthWorm Castings 1/6 (120lbs) Composted Hardwood Material 5lbs 6-Row Malted Barley Flour 2lbs Insect Frass 2lbs Azomite 1.5lbs Oyster Shell Flour 1/2lb Powdered Dolomite Lime 2lbs Diatomite Powder 3lbs Hydrolyzed Feather Meal 2lbs Alfalfa Meal 2lbs Neem Seed Meal 4lbs Crab Shell Meal 3lbs Aerobically Composted Poultry Manure 5lbs Fish Bone Meal 2lbs High P Seabird Guano 5lbs Greensand 5lbs Kelp Meal 2lbs Langbeinite I also do add both a bacterial inoculant to jumpstart the composting process as well as adding some biofungicide properties to the soil. I also add mycorrhizae to the soil, but this happens after the cooking is done and I'm ready to plant, also I inoculate the root ball. Want thoughts and opinions here... any pointers or questions definitely welcome. Always looking to learn and gain knowledge. Thanks!
Just a few thoughts.. Base: 1/3 Sphagnum Peat 1/3 Perlite 1/6 (120lbs) EarthWorm Castings 1/6 (120lbs) Composted Hardwood Material 5lbs 6-Row Malted Barley Flour (not needed. Save it for the plants.) 2lbs Insect Frass (not needed.) 2lbs Azomite (perilite is best and this stuff contains aluminum.) 1.5lbs Oyster Shell Flour 1/2lb Powdered Dolomite Lime 2lbs Diatomite Powder (not needed) 3lbs Hydrolyzed Feather Meal (not needed, Alfalfa and Neem have you covered with the manure.) 2lbs Alfalfa Meal 2lbs Neem Seed Meal 4lbs Crab Shell Meal 3lbs Aerobically Composted Poultry Manure 5lbs Fish Bone Meal 2lbs High P Seabird Guano (not needed, FBM is covering P along with chicken manure. Bat Guano harvesting is bad for the bats and the workers.) 5lbs Greensand 5lbs Kelp Meal 2lbs Langbeinite (not needed.) You have a lot of nutrients that are providing the same things. This mix is extremely rich and will most likely end up burning your plants. I would highly suggest taking the items out I suggested and use them as a top dress if ever needed or something like that. Here’s my mix so you can get a feel for what I am talking about. 1 cu.ft. (7.5gals) Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss. (Hydrated) 1 cu.ft. (7.5gal) Earthworm Castings 8.5gals Horticulture Perilite 2 gals Bio-Char (RAW, uncharged) 1 cup Alfalfa meal 1 cup Comfrey meal (homemade) 2 cups Kelp meal 2 cups Crab meal 2 cups 50/50 Neem/Karanja meal 2.5 cups Oyster Shell Flour 1 cup Gypsum Pellets 3 cups Balsalt Rock Dust 1 cup Greensand 1 cup St. George’s Black rock dust. Let this cook for a month before use.
Greatly appreciate the input. Yes this is a "hot" mix, it will get a 4-6 week cook time, and this will be layered also, plants will not go directly into this. What I've done prior to this mix, and I would say especially now is to try to diversify the types of inputs I have, which should allow for different release timing, and what I think is a wider diversity of microbiology in the soil composting and competing. It looks like you are mixing roughly 25gals of soil given added inputs and such. For reference, I am mixing right around 200gals, using the same rates straight through as a large batch of your soil would give me right around 1lb Alfalfa 1lb-ish of Comfrey 4lbs Kelp 3.5lbs Crab Meal 3.25lbs Neem/Karanja 4lbs Oyster Shell I did add some extra N sources because of the higher carbon to N ratio that the forest material I believe will have, I did try to compensate with adding the feather meal as a slow release and not tie up all N cycling the carbon, maybe my thought there is off? I will say I really do like the variety of rock inputs you use. You don't think the extra silica from the diatomite is needed? I kinda also added it to help against nutrient leaching and hopefully some pest deterrence. And no on the frass either? What is the reasoning there, because I already have the crab shell meal? Would you recommend the Basalt in place of the Azomite? The seabird guano I simply added a little for the quick shot of P, but also a healthy dose of sulfur. I do however agree with you about bat guano, and it is why I use bird poo. Thank you much for the input so far!
Couple of things - just my opinion of course. More rock dust 13.5c is 1/2c per cu ft, 27c is 1c per cu ft - I'd shoot for somewhere between there. I'd get rid of the seabird guano (you have plenty of P) and lime (you have oyster shell, crab meal, and poultry manure) Add some gypsum for added calcium and sulfur I'm not really a fan of feather meal either - whole slaughter house byproduct deal I think the rest of it looks pretty good. You're using really light amounts of a lot of amendments which I think it fine, especially if you have already used the mix with success. Always easier to add in than take away. Peace! P-
I’ll start by saying that to much of anything is a bad thing, also hurting your microbe life. We see this in farm fields where fertilizers are constantly applied. It also interrupts the bond between plant and mycros. If the plant thinks it can get everything it needs, it won’t be motivated to form that bond. I use a product called Grow-Sil for Silica, it’s made from rice hulls which fits my plants feeding plants thing. I use it almost every day. You mentioned nutrient leaching, are you going to be watering heavily to run off every time? I believe most organic growers don’t water to that point to avoid washing out everything. Insect Frass is expensive and it’s basically bug poop, something you’ll get plenty of over time with a healthy environment. You can make your own by raising Black Soldier Flies. The Crab meal and top dressed Malted Barley Grains will form a Chitinese compound which does major damage to bad bugs. Balsalt is the highest quality Rock Dust. I would it and 10-20% of your total Rock Dust mix be St. George’s Black RD. Has a lot of nutrients in it. If you want sulfur, get Gypsum, super cheap!! Leave the sea birds alone, lol, they don’t need their habitats messed up either. Last but certainly not least, Bio-Char! It helps draw in and store’s nutrients, water, and an awesome home for microbes. Also provides aeration and would help regulate everything.
Just a question, are you going off of the Rev's mix? It kind of sounds like his techniques. Which in my opinion are overkill in a big pot.
@NNFarms So random question but where did you acquire the info regarding how fast each constituent breaks down? I want to learn more about that for my mixes but don't know if there is a centralized location I could look at to find that stuff out. Also, are you getting your soil tested to find CEC and NPK? I know how to test soil PH with a slurry but am always interested in more in depth testing.
Given the wide variation in soil, water and even nutrient make up (2 batches of guano can be quite different even if there both ''veg'') it would be hard to give an estimated time for the breakdown of these nutrients. Most of the ionisation will be done by the water, so the contents of your water and how often you water will probably be what affects breakdown time the most.
I'm convinced to add more rock dusts, so I've got some Basalt and Gypsum that I will add some to this mix as it cooks and will bump the rates up in the future. It does also make perfect sense to me that my silica source could very well be solved by using Greensand, Basalt, Azomite, etc. in combination and be able to drop the Diatomite altogether. I am curious could I just use rice hulls in the mix and as it composts down over time supply plants with a decent silica source, as well as a little aeration? Makes good sense to me. I'm also not a huge fan of guanos or animal byproducts honestly, and my two other guys who do the mixing and cultivating with me debating on supplementing other sources and eliminating the seabird guano, poultry manure, and feather meal. We still may do this the next mix, as I lean that way as well. The lime if you look at rate, was more added for a magnesium source because we had it available already. I'm kind of not a huge fan of epsom salts either, we did have that available but didn't use it this round. Frass definitely is a more expensive source for chitin for sure, I do like the NPK better than say crab shell meal, but that is honestly easily compensated for given the small-ish amount of frass I had used, also something we had some off and pitched it in. I actually forgot to add that there is 2-3 pounds of bio-char in the mix. I'm not really going off of Rev's mix, I am aware of it however... never ran the exact mix myself, but I do like the variety in that mix. I don't believe there was one specific source I used to find break-down rates of each of these, I do believe "Down to Earth" products list this quite often... but a lot of my info on this came from different searches for each compound trying to figure out things that break down quick to medium, and then medium-slow for each of the macro nutrients to give a well rounded line of food for the soil, thus the plant. Yes my soils all get CEC and NPK, along with pH tested. I guess what I mean is, the more variety of inputs you have in the soil, bring in a wider microbiology to consume that variety of inputs. Some organisms break down sources across the board, some "eat" a smaller range of inputs. Whether it's 100% necessary or not, I don't know for sure, but I like to think so. Thoughts there? At the end of the day, things have became recreational here in MI, and over the course of several years I've helped people try to stay organic and fairly sustainable... Any advice ends up being used to help me dial in my mixes, and to help others who may not otherwise know. So any help and info here gets passed on, and I greatly appreciate that!
A couple more pics of our no-till. I know there is a huge wealth of knowledge here, hoping you guys get a kick out of these.
The rice hulls would provide Silica months and months later on, aeration in the beginning. I like to use rice hulls for a mulch too. Works great! I would drop the diatomite & Azomite. Like you mentioned, Greensand and Balsalt contain Silica, but I would try and get a plant based one in there for foliar sprays, etc. will be immediately available to the plants. Nothing wrong with using composted manure in your soil mix, I used horse manure as my EWC for my soil mix, no issues. Now that I have a larger supply of EWC, I just use that in my soil mix. Chicken manure is great but strong, it is advisable to use it sparely and I wouldn’t continue to apply it to your grow area yearly with a soil test. “You are unlimited!” Prepper420’s No-Tillin Adventure!
Have both of those along w/ Teaming with Fungi and some other good books. I've tried to do a fair amount of reading/listening to Wilson, Ingham, etc also. Much appreciate all the info. I definitely think I'll look into the other types of rock dusts for sure.
I guess another question is when I start to mix several yards at a time, making large batches and sourcing bulk of each input without completely breaking the bank or turning others off to the cost as well.
Organic soil will already have all the microbiology in place and is able to break down any organic amendment. It's not like there are specific bacteria that only breaks down alfalfa or guano. Adding a variety of amendments isn't going to give you a more diverse population but rather just change the balance of the types and the amount and ratios of available nutrients in the soil. Not that I think there is anything inherently wrong with adding many amendments, I just don't think its at all necessary and just adds more layers (no pun intended) of complication, I highly doubt it will outperform no-till mix which uses very little inputs but is well balanced. In the end, the quality of your compost is what's going to determine how well your soil will perform.
I agree with that, and it makes perfect sense why very simple mixes like Coot's mix work so well. Simple soil bacteria definitely do decompose a huge array of organic materials.
Exactly one week of "cook" time on this batch. Will still add a little Basalt and Gypsum on Tuesday likely. Remix and let compost another several weeks... will be turned once a week.
@NNFarms Wow! How do you get that much old mans beard on there? Mine gets a good amount but nothing like that. Any tips?