im looking for a soil i can use in my next grow that will require minimal tending to. im not a big fan of having to check my soil or having to add nutes. im shopping around for items to use in my soil. its not really the time of year for the stores around here to be stocking that sort of stuff and the only thing ive been able to run across is miracle grow blood meal and bone meal. it was on clearance so i went ahead and picked up a 3lb bag of each. can anyone tell me what else ill be needing? i know ill be needing a base soil but what brand i do not know. after doing some reading i think i need around 30 percent of my mix to be aeration. so perlite is on my list for that. can someone also help me with the ratios i will be using with my soil mix? i need enough soil to fill 4 5gallon buckets. List of ingredents i currently have. 2.2 cubic feet of Sphagnum peat moss(premier) perlite espoma garden tone blood meal bone meal
Are you wanting to do no-till or just a good organic soil? You want your base soil to be about 30% aeration amendment, 30% humus (compost/EWC), 30-40% peat moss. With no till beds, you probably want to go for more variety, since you won't be modifying the soil much. With a regular organic soil, IMO, you don't need to be quite so concerned with having a large variety of amendments. As far as amendments go, kelp meal is a must-have. Also alfalfa meal, neem meal, and crab meal are very beneficial. Oyster shell flour, and glacial rock dust or azomite as good for mineral amendments. 1 cubic foot of soil is about 7 gallons. The below amounts are for 1 cubic foot of soil. Make a blend of your nutritional amendments (all your "meals" and anything like guano, etc.) and add 2-3 cups of the amendment mix per cubic foot of soil. Then make a blend of your mineral amendments like oyster shell flour, glacial rock dust, azomite, etc. Add 3 cups of the mineral mix per cubic foot of soil. You will also want to add about 1/2-1 cup of limestone (agricultural lime, garden lime) per cubic foot of soil to help buffer the acidity of the peat. HTH, just ask if you have any questions also, if you want to do no-till, talk to jerry. He's got great no-till beds going
im not sure if it would be no till or just great organic soil to be honest. i just dont want to fuss with it! i went cheap on everything last time and like everyone said, it bit me in the ass. some things i just gotta figure out on my own i guess.i updated the list i started in my original post. thanks for the help~ its much appreciated as for all the amendments you suggested. do i need ALL of them in my blend? i havent started to price the ingredients you suggested but it seems this is going to be a bit more costly then i originally had hoped.
You don't need all of them. A cheaper way to do it is to use a good dry organic fertilizer like Espoma "tomato tone" or "garden tone" and some kelp meal added to your base soil. This will still give you a good, balanced organic soil. Kelp meal is a little pricey but it's pretty indispensable. No till is a method where you don't disturb the soil. After you harvest a plant, you put another plant right in the soil and maybe top dress with some kelp meal and EWC. No till is just a method. But you are going to use a good soil either way.
i believe i saw some of this "garden tone" and "tomato tone" at the local bargin store today. i could have sworn it was miracle grow but it had the same names you referred to on the bag. anyways, ill be pricing everything as soon as i complete my list. since i have them i would like to utilize the 3lb bags of bone and blood meal. so how does this sound..? Espoma garden tone Perlite ewc kelp meal blood meal bone meal glacial rock dust oyster shell flour the garden tone,ewc and perlite would make my base soil right? or would i probably want to add peat moss to the list too? also when it comes to the ratios i would want 35 percent(roughly) perlite and 55 percent garden tone with ewc. or with the peat moss as you said earlier 30-30-40. now when mixing the garden tone and ewc, would a 50/50 mix of the two do? I have to say again Thank you as im completely new to mixing soils and playing around with ingredients. half of the amendments you rattled off ive never even heard of!
No . Espoma garden tone is an organic fertilizer that you should treat like an amendment. Add it as part of your amendment mix (along with bone meal, blood meal, and kelp meal) at a rate of 2 cups total of amendment mix per cubic foot of soil. You need to get some decent peat moss for your base mix. Get a square bale of Canadian Sphagnum peat moss (premier is a common brand). They will have this at home depot or lowes or a farm/feed store (best). It should be about $9-12 for a big bale. Your base mix should be (roughly) 30%EWC/compost, 30% perlite, 40% peat moss. You also need to get some lime for your base soil. Look for agricultural lime, garden lime, or dolomite lime. You want to avoid hydrated, or "fast-acting" lime. Add 1/2-1 cup of lime per cubic foot of base soil. Again, 1 cubic foot is about 7 gallons. Depending on how much soil you want to make, you can use a 1 or 5 gallon bucket to measure your base soil. You don't have to have the oyster shell flour, that is just an "extra" amendment. Glad I can help!
Read the first post.if you dont want to read the whole thing ship down the the sentence that starts "I'm not done yet".Just what your looking for I beleive. http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-m...door-gardening-without-bottled-nutrients.html Better yet heres the quote... I'm not done yet - I have one more thing that has blown me away, and, I bet, will blow you away too - its called "No-Till" organic gardening. My soil mix is simply SO RICH that as soon as I harvest a big plant out of my 12-15 gallon sized containers, the very same day I dig out of the center of the pot the main root ball - around a gallon sized hole, and I immediately drop in a vegging plant that's in a 1 gallon sized container into this hole. I topdress it with some earthworm castings, tuck a little around it if needed, dampen it, and I'm done. That's it - finis. Right now I'm on my 5th batch of plants in the same soil as plant No. 1, with absolutely no sign of drain on quality whatsoever, in fact, they are friggin THRIVING. We don't need to spend a million on overpriced and overrated chemical nutrients. I don't need to check pH. I don't need to flush. My buds are totally superb.
i updated the list of stuff i have in my original post. the kelp meal was a bust, ill have to order it. it looks like all i need now is ewc and the kelp meal to start a decent mix?? when it comes to my amendment mix,whats the ratio for the kelp/bone/blood meal/garden tone? i cant wait to get the other two ingredents! im so excited to be doing it right the first time. i was also wondering about the "cooking process" that ill be going through.
For "no till" gardening, look up Ruth Stout, or read "The One Straw Revolution" for a large scale look at this method. Granny
thanks Granny! ill look into it! im sitting here staring at my pile of ingredients and i really wish i coulda got my other 2 ingredients today so i could start mixing. edit~ i forgot about the lime and compost. you said 30% humus..is that just a 50/50 mix of the ewc and compost? or can i get away with adding just ewc to my peatmoss and perlite?
30% humus means that you want 30% of your base to be made up of your humus source, whatever it may be (EWC or compost). If you have both EWC and compost, definitely use a blend of the two, variety is always good. But if you just have EWC that's totally fine too. I've made plenty of soil with just EWC. Unless you are making the compost or get it from a good local source, it's usually easier to find high quality EWC than high quality compost (for me anyway). Do a google search and try to find a farm/feed store or a good nursery in your area. They will have kelp meal. HTH
So, if I'm correct, these are the amendments you will be adding to your base soil: -Espoma garden tone -blood meal -bone meal -kelp meal Correct? Now for the ratios. Garden tone already has bone meal in it, so you don't need to add a lot of bone meal. It also has alfalfa meal, feather meal, manure, and cocoa meal as high N sources so you can go easy on the blood meal as well. I would use mostly garden tone and kelp meal, with a small amount of blood meal and bone meal added. So your amendment mix might be something like 1 part garden tone: 1 part kelp meal: 1/4 part bone meal: 1/4 part blood meal. Then you would add 2 cups of this mix per cubic foot (around 7 gallons) of soil. HTH
got it! then for my amendment mix ill use 1/4 cups of bone meal, 1/4 cups of blood meal, 1 cups of garden tone, 1 cups of kelp meal, mix all this together in 1 bucket. this would be enough for 1 cubic foot of soil, so i would double my recipe
got it! so if i have a 2.2 cubic foot bag of peat moss ill use (this is a rough estimate) 1.5 cubic feet of perlite and 1.5 cubic feet of ewc/compost. that will make my base mix. then for my amendment mix ill use 1/4 cups of bone meal, 1/4 cups of blood meal, 1 cups of garden tone, 1 cups of kelp meal, mix all this together in 1 bucket. this would be enough for 1 cubic foot of soil, so i would double my recipe you've got it with the ratios of amendments! But let's talk about your base soil for a minute. That 2.2 cubic foot bale of peat moss is compressed and will expand when you get it out of the bag and all fluffed up. It might be closer to 3 or 3.5 cubic feet or even more, you can't be sure until you get it out of the bag. I would suggest you use a 5 gallon bucket to measure out your base soil ingredients, especially the peat since it is compressed and thus hard to determine the exact amount without measuring. 1 & 1/2 five gallon buckets worth of peat moss (or perlite, etc.) would be 7.5 gallons, or 1 cubic foot. I'm assuming you have 1.5 cubic foot bags of perlite and EWC. 1.5 cubic feet EWC (or 2 five gallon buckets worth) 1.5 cubic feet perlite (or 2 five gallon buckets worth) 2 five gallon buckets of peat moss (which will give you 1.5 cubic feet of peat moss) Now you will have 4.5 cubic feet of base soil. Since you want to add 2 cups of amendment mix per cubic foot of soil, you will add 4.5x2= 9 cups of amendment mix. This means 4 cups garden tone, 4 cups kelp meal, 1/2 cup bone meal, 1/2 cup blood meal. (This will not be a 1:1/4 ratio of garden tone to bone/blood meal, but it would be better to use less blood and bone meals rather than less garden tone and kelp meal since the garden tone already contains these ingredients and the garden tone and kelp are far more beneficial than the blood and bone meals). Remember to add about 1/2-1 cup of lime per cubic foot of base soil as well. You base the amount of amendment mix to add on the total cubic feet of your base soil (peat + perlite + EWC), not just the amount of peat moss. If you want to make more or less than 4.5 cubic feet of soil, just use a 5 gallon bucket and, to keep it simple, a 1:1:1 ratio of peat moss, perlite, and EWC. Remembering that there are 7.5 gallons to a cubic foot, you can then calculate how many cubic feet of base soil you have and therefore how much amendment mix to add.
yea i was thinking that all out in my head and when i re read what i edited out i didnt know what in the world i was thinking. youve provided me with almost EVERYTHING i needed to know. theres only one question left for me to ask. if i wanted to make a seed starting mix with some of the peat moss and perlite what else would i use? surfing craigslist i found someone selling two bins of red wiggler earthworms. theyve been fed organics all their life and the bins have over 500 worms plus the eggs and cacoons. he wants 15 dollars for it all. would this be a viable option for getting my ewc instead of buying it?
Yes. Also, it would be the other thing(ewc) you would use in your starter mix. Reasonable price on two bins of worms.
i had a sneaking suspicion that would be the other ingredient. i dont think ill be buying the worms off him though as its fall now and temps are already dropping to the 40s at night. they wouldnt survive that would they?
Glad to help! Use your base mix (peat + perlite + EWC + lime to neutralize acidity of peat) as a mix for seeds and clones. You can use just plain peat, perlite and lime, but the EWC are great for seedlings. They provide nutrition and good microbial life but they will not burn the plant at all. That is a really great deal for the worm bins! Worms are typically anywhere from $15-40 per lb, so you would pay about $15 for 1/2 lb of worms (about 500), and he's giving you the bins for free. That being said, is raising worms something that you want to do? This would not be the best way to get EWC for this grow, but it would be a good way to produce EWC for future grows. There is probably not nearly enough EWC in the bins for your soil mix. So, if you want to raise worms, definitely snag that deal. But if you are just looking for EWC for your soil mix, just buy some. I have to order mine online. If you are on the west coast, agrowinn apparently produces very good castings. HTH
well if it means having it in the future im down for it, however i dont like the idea of having them inside for the warmth this winter. im actually on the other end of the states. I hate shipping costs on this stuff! i hate bombarding you all with questions, but i have another one. i have heard that the deeper the pots the better. so if i used 3 gallon pots that were as deep as a 5 gallon bucket would this be ok? ive also started wondering. should i add different amendments? like should i wait to get the funds to buy a wider variety of them?
The bigger the pots, the better, but you can use any size pot. 3 gallons will definitely be fine. And deep pots are good. You can always go ahead and mix up your soil, then add in the new amendments when you can get them. This way your soil can go ahead and start "cooking"-the microbes can get to work breaking down the amendments. You may just want to add 1&1/2 cups of amendment mix per cubic foot if you plan on adding extra amendments (once again, go for the garden tone and kelp meal over the blood and bone meals). Then after you add the new amendments make sure to let it sit for a few more weeks.