Glad to have you here ice mud! Coconut water is a great addition isn't it? Can never stop innovation, I haven't used a naked smoothie but on a different note I do like to mulch with random herbs, with notable attributes, like fresh cilantro, mints, holy basils and whenever I get a hold of yarrow, nettles and comfrey.....which is not very frequent lately. By default many no-tills have gotten nothing but cannabis mulch which definitely holds up on its own! Good stuff gimik - I think you'd be plenty successful no tilling those 7gal smarties. I did my own sort of experiment with no tilling all my moms/dads in 1gal and 2gal nursery pots - keep em small and when they get too woody I take cuts and chop the mom at the base, keep the pot watered and replant the rooted cutting directly in and they always take off! 2gal no-tills going on over a year! Hey 3D! Keep mulching and with the worms in the soil it really does only get better and better. I forget the name but a guy over on IC way back notilled with great success in the same space you're working with. Hi compostwhisperr, thanks for checkin in - my soil is also in the 3year range and couldn't be happier! Ridiculous simple isn't it?!? 7 week blue orca x NLH - I really like this one!
I've used the same soil for about 5 runs with great results but then the plant quality started degrading. Do you re-amend and cook your soil between uses, or just use it how it comes out of your previous pots. I usually re-amend mine with worm castings, calcium carbonate, soft rock phosphate, gypsum and azomite.
Hey mud, i run 20 gal soft pots. No remixing necessary, i use 2cups of kelp,neem,crab, alfalfa per cf, And also the standard 4 cups of rockdust (granite,quarts,some gypsum) to start the mix. After harvest just put in the new plant , toss about 1 cup of the same kelp,neem,crab, alfalfa mix on the pot, cover with about 8 cups compost/EWC and keep on growin. CW
You might be overmineralizing the soil - just EWC would be perfect with very small amounts of amendments like neem and kelp. Lots of mulch. CaCO3, SRP, gypsum and azomite need only be added once - that's it! Worms, soil life - nutrient cycling.
sounds a lot like my soil mix... I use pro mix amended with worm castings, a 6-5-3 ratio of (calcium carbonate, soft rock phosphate, gypsum), lava sand, glacial rock dust, azomite and greensand, and for my meals (kelp, crab shell, fish bone meal, alfalfa meal). whats the purpose of the quartz? silicon?
How do you all manage to top dress with either compost or castings and not end up with a top layer of mud? Every time I try the standard 1-2" top dress, I end up with that mud layer that eventually hardens if it gets dry enough. As result, I've only been adding it in the form of a very loose slurry.
people generally forget to mention adding an aeration component into the mulch but I mix in some rice hulls for my mulch material. I used to mulch just straight vermi/compost but I experienced the same issue so I made the above adjustment, which I find works very well. Most of the time my top layer of soil gets covered with dead/pruned leaves or clover which help maintain moisture in the critical portion of the soil. I also let my mulches cycle for a week or two before topdressing, usually loaded with some neem and kelp, maybe fish meal if I feel it's necessary or just want to. I rely on my vermicompost to provide any additional CaCO3 that may have been utilized during the last run, so no oyster shell or gypsum. Biochars where it's at next in my journey. I don't want to buy any so I haven't used it yet, though I'm making a block "oven" of sorts to pyrolize in when I get some money or find some more block to build with.
Hey ther blue, yea i dont add any additional rockdust when Tplanting. Just the kelp, neem, crab, alfalfa mix. Im sure i get plenty of additional calcium carbonate from the crabshell but also other benifits like chitin. The only problem im having now after 3 years of running this notill mix with only ricehulls as aeration is compaction. Next mix will have lava, perlite, and expanded shale as well. Mud, the headstone/countertop shop where i get granite slurry also cuts quarts sometimes but only natural stone luckly! I can go there and shovel as much as id like out of there big tub for free! No reason to add quartz specificly, just another spot for the micros to heard imo. TripleD, in the 20 gals 8cups really isnt even close to 1-2inches. I scratch it in with the soil in the top of the pot too. Also had white clover going for a while, its still goin well in some pots but others not so much. The mj plants get big and most of it seems to die off. Edit: gimik had a great point. I typically add rice hulls in my homemade compost to keep it nice and fluffy. Some bagged compost especially are very dense. CW
Mulch is critical in the no-tills, and I think best with plant material, definitely should be utilizing all prunings and stems/leaves from harvest. Once before each cycle I'll add barely 1/4" of (vermi)compost beneath any existing mulch that hasn't decomposed. I'll gently move all to one side, lay down the (vermi)compost, and repeat on the other side, with all fresh mulch spread out on top. If I don't mulch for a whole month what was there is nearly completely decomposed. Never dig into the soil at all. Constant mulch and clover sprouting/growing keeps it moist and loamy on top thus preventing any issues with mud/compaction or that crusty top layer. My homemade castings always has rice hulls in it, if not I'm sure I would mix some in as mentioned. I've also used rice hulls as my only aeration source and yes after several months they will be gone - turned to humus. I've since switched to just lava rock when making new soil and don't bother crushing it up at all, works great and saves the trouble of driving over bags to crush it up. Also, if you have crab shell as a main amendment and rock dusts - there's no need to add SRP, azomite or CaCO3. EWC has plenty of calcium along with the addition of crab/crustacean meal with the benefit (and why I use it) of an excellent chitin source and a phosphorus source, if you're concerned with specifically getting more P into the mix. With a high CEC humus based mix you eventually stop thinking of NPK's altogether. I was reminded the other day "get your humus right, and the rest is like a pleasant drive through the countryside."
@[member="GiMiK"] (does the @ thing work here?) "Biochars where it's at next in my journey. I don't want to buy any so I haven't used it yet, though I'm making a block "oven" of sorts to pyrolize in when I get some money or find some more block to build with." Biochar is the next thing I'll be playing with also - since I have plenty of no-tills in great working order I'm going to pick up the powderized form from black owl and water it in, keep a few with none in it to see if there's any visible differences. I'd be looking for increased vigor (quicker growth), stem size, thick leaves and quicker budset.
This thread just keeps getting better!! Thanks for all the info guys. I am pretty new to all this, and when I made my soil I figured I might as well do no till. Now I am learning all the stuff to actually make it work. So I am starting to cut down some of the plants in my first run soil. I also picked up some smart pots that I want to try next. So I am going to be dumping out a few of my hard pots as they finish and change over to the smarties. Do I need to re-amend this soil before putting it back in the smartpots? My plan was to put some lava in the bottom, then the soil. Seed that with white and red clover and top dress with some EWC. Let the cover crop to grow for the next 4-6 weeks till my babies are ready.
If the last crop was to your liking, nothing needs to be done or added to your soil. If hesitant a great way to reuse existing soil and "beef" it up is to mix it 50/50 or even 75/25 with new soil. I often did something like this: 2 parts "old" soil 1part peat 1/2 part lava rock 1/2 part (vermi)compost -pre-amended I just added a 45gal smartie under the lights and just dumped old soil into it and planted a purple haze right in - guess what? Absolutely no difference compared to other batches of soil I so meticulously re-amended etc....who'd a thought! Otherwise, your plan sounds golden as is.
When you use stems for mulch do you chop or shred them? Also in a perpetual setup, would you see any advantage to using the same soil for the same strain. Would the soil be better suited for the same genetics?
I generally just cut the stems to small lengths and toss em in there. Some might argue that landrace sativas vs stout indicas could benefit from different soil base - less "nutrients" for sativas - but a high humus living soil will get the job for all strains. I've done no-tills with vastly different strains in the same container and finishing at different times - planting at different times. They all do their thing and grow happily together. The strange sensitivity to neem (fresh) for some varieties is a different story and not related to sativa vs indica and also has nothing to do with long term soil bases.
Hey bluebird just started my soil mix 1/3 coco 1/3 high equality ewc 1/3 perlite to this mix I added 1 cup crab 1 cup kelp 1 cup high p bat guano. This is about 20 gallons total and going into two 10 gallon pots, will I need more than just the 3 cups of dry ammendments? It turns out to around 3 cubic feet of soil, any help would be greatly appreciated! Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Hey man! You could double the kelp to 2 cups and if you can get a hold of some neem seed meal I would add a cup of that also. I'm a huge advocate of neem seed meal - organic from neemresource.com. Several cups of rock dust also if you have access to something like basalt or glacial rock dust - good to go!
Thank you very much bluejay going to the local stone cutters now to see if I can find some free granite! Thank you so much for the help ! Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Just be aware some places dont take as good of care of there slurry as others. I got lucky but have heard of some nasty troughs with floor dirt, oil, and who knows what mixed in too. CW