Organic Soil

INGREDIENTS: Coir, compost (dairy cow manure, wood chips, straw, concentrations of yarrow, chamomile, valerian, stinging nettle, dandelion, & oak bark), fir bark, perlite, worm castings, soybean meal, fish meal, fish bone meal, langbeinite, alfalfa meal, crab meal, green sand, neem seed meal, volcanic ash, & kelp meal.

could be a hot mix I'd keep some extra sand or perlite handy

good luck

 

Baby Bu is considered one of the better quality bagged soils out there, still, making your own will always be the better, assuming you can source quality humus (compost/castings).

 

Is bagged compost and ewc good enough to start no till if no local available? What dry amendments should be added to make up for it?

 

Better then nothing but remember, the quality of your soil depends on the quality of your compost/castings. No amount of amending is going to change that.

 

Good start but i would suggest -1/6compost+1/6 EWC
-1/3 spaghnum peatmoss
-1/3 aeration(perlite,ricehulls,pumic)

Amendments:
-dolomite lime
-rock dust
-kelp-meal
-Alfalfa meal
-Neem meal

Just straight compost and casting will be really muddy and you wont have proper aeration. Will most likely lead to root rot & ph issues. Aerobic bacteria are what youre trying to colonize in your pots Aerobic meaning bacteria requiring air. Perlite and spaghnum peat will help lighten the mix and make a nice airy home for your microbes.




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Question for you guys. I was wanting to do a 65 gal no till in a 3x3 but the pot height is 18", so with a 3ft tall plant I'm left with 18" for my light which is really pushing it. Anyone have the same setup? I'm wondering if I should build a 3x3 box maybe 14" tall but the loss of soil doesnt seem worth it for 4". If I top or lst to keep my height down I imagine I would end up w plants about 24-32". 215 patient and I like to run many strains, 8-11 in a perpetual. Once this is setup actually thinking about flowering out my moms and starting new ones. Right now, ssh, god bud, blue god, afghan, private reserve, sour pineapple in flower and have mothers, and have chemdawg blue dream and something else dont remember lol coming from seed. Read all the books and have been doing 9-16 at a time in flower. Went from 1 gal plastic pots to 2 and 3 gal smarts. They are just too small to do any real tlo without running into problem after problem so want to get into no till esp for the clean meds and how close to nature you can replicate. Was planning on getting either coots nutrient and mineral mix from kis or a nutrient pack from buildasoil. Thoughts? I have bagged ewc but am going to try sourcing locally so I can also get worms, put a handful in the mix and then start my own bin separately. As far ascompost, there, is a local facility near me that has free mulch and compost but have not seen the quality of it yet as it has been raining. Wondering if I should do a ft or two of this, a cu ft of Malibu bc I can get it locally, and a cu ft or so of local ewc instead of bagged. I want to get it right and not have any def problems and the thought of this humus is driving me nuts. As far as aeration I need to try to source pumice locally bc shipping is crazy. Thinking 2 cu ft pumice and a foot or so of perlite. I dont have to hit 65 gal on the nose, I just want some solid ass soil to produce uber clean meda. I also have down to earth alfafa fish bone and azomite, should I amend a ft or so of my soil after harvest and add that to the mix like a super soil or is it not worth it? I really need some help from the expert no till guys. Also as a cover crop, would clover be better than barley? Can the barley cover crop be used as mbp? What is the process to malt it?

 

My flower exhausts straight into my veg. I know w led lights the tent has to be a bit warmer and seems to be working good right now. Thinking about making a bed for this too if my flower works out great. How would one go about transplanting from veg to flower? Would it be wiser to keep the veg tent in pots, maybe w extra soil from the flower so that they are already acclimated to it? The led light is a king 1000w around 300w actual. Cheap light but keeps my personal garden moving. Should I add extra calmag into my veg soil to compensate for the led or OS there anything I should be watching out for w led/no till?

 

Lotta questions ill try answering best i can. 65 gal seems like pretty big undertaking i have dealt with same issues with 3 gal smarts they are just too small to keep moist. worms tend to dry out and escape or die. I ended up going to 7 gal smarts and have had much better success i like to use crimson clover it seems to take really well in my soil and helps shade the worms and keep the top soil moist also they are N fixing so they pull N and makie it bioavailable for your plants. My soil is comprised of compost i make with my grass clipping fall cleanup leaves and whatever weeds i pull out of my flower beds i also add kitchen scraps as my worm bin is too small to handle my entire households scraps. If i were you id steer clear of untrustworthy sources of compost if its free from a transfer station or town dump probably wouldnt trust it. Free usually means it wasnt tended to, and could potentially contain anaerobic bacterias or pests. Never used malibu but heard it is high quality. Maybe stick to locally sourced ewc and malibu add some peat and pumice to keep it airy and yes down to earth ammendments will help give the worms and soil life a jump start. I would recommend dolomite lime or oyster shell as ph buffer/ source of cal. Also recommend implementing ACCT teas throughout your grow to continuously introduce new vigorous microbes. Also mychorhizal fungi in granular/ powder form (xtreme mykos, greatwhite) will aid in drought resistance and nutrient uptake while alleviating any stress you put your plant through while training. Neem meal is another great amendment for controling pest and adding some N and worm/microbe food to your mix. The way i look at it the more variety or soucres of food for worms and bacteria the better, Just be aware of the Nitrogen levels of amendments you add try not to make soil too hot, also good idea to let soil sit and cook in pots for cppl weeks before planting. Hopefully that helps man. Goodluck happy growing.

Ps: if you like reading couple books to check out:
- True living Organics with the rev
-Teaming with Microbes


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I ran 2 1000watt king leds (full spectrum double chips) in a 4x4 (flower tent) for couple years, yeilds weren’t crazy big but always got exceptional quality with my TLO/notill setup. Recently upgraded to hlg550 hoping for increase in yeilds. i think for the price point you chose a good light. I dont think additional cal/mag will make your lights work any more effectivly. But i will say this when i went from running a soil setup with liquid “organic”nutes to my notill i really noticed an improvement in flavor and terp profiles as well as a smoother smoking product. If you decide to go the notill route you most likely will not see increased yeilds just higher quality yeilds. For my setup I eliminated transplanting all together by planting my clones or seedlings directly into a 7 gal smart pot which i will veg/flower/finish in. Transplanting in fabric can sometimes be a hassle because roots will often attach to fabric and when transplanting you could very easily shock/stress your plant and this will slow you down as they will need time to recover before you flip. With the king leds I noticed in order to get adequate light penetration during flower i had to keep the light relatively close to the canopy roughly 12-14”. Something i would consider is that this light will have difficulty giving adequate light to lower branches so in my opinion prior to flower lollipoping is a must( unless u dont mind larf/ popcorn buds) I usually lollipop any lower branches that are too small to support a substantial cola or are being shaded by upper vegetation.
Few questions before i can give you advice/pointers.
-what size footprint will u be flowering under?
-how many plants to you intend to flower?
- what type of soil are you utilizing now?
- what size/material pots.
- compost teas?



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Hey man thanks for the replies! I have both of those books, great reading. I went from regular bottled nutrients to pseudo organic to tlo. This style of no till growing just blows my mind its wicked cool how complicated nature is. So I went and checked out that compost.....it was definitely free! I was the only resident there, seems like everyone was coming from out of town and had to pay. Pile was pretty wet from the rains but got a 55 gal trashcan of compost, and a 25 gal and 10 gal of mulch. The compost seems like it should be some great shit but we will see. Today I am going to have to lay out some plastic and dump it out on it so I dont get anything going anaerobic on me. The mulch seems to be maybe 50% wood and the rest is decaying matter, also seems high in value but time will tell. Yesterday I took the top 2 inches or so of my soil out of all my pots, both flower and veg, added in an inch or so of compost and a top layer of mulch and watered in. My mothers needed a haircut severely and I saw a few leaves jussst starting to get PM so I basically cut out all my fans to get thru airflow and more light to my nodes bc they were getting too weak. I know my soil takes 4-5 days for a full recovery so will be very interesting to see what happens with the compost. Figure it's a cheap fast simple way to test the quality. I've had a lot going on, my father is dying and I am about to move soon so I'm using this last month or so as a test point as I am not taking any plants from flower w me. They should all be done a week before I move. This is the first time i have grown in a garage, usually used to indoors with a/c or outdoor, and these temps were tricky to control. I ran 16 1 gals in flower for a while, but now I have all 2 and 3 gal smarts. I usually run around 9 strains at a time perpetual, 3 weeks apart, so that is the reasoning for the small pots. My soil is rols, ammended with alfafa, kelp, azomite, fish bone meal, and Greensand. Has been top dressed or made into a tea- roots organics grow bloom foundation nitro guano phos guano terp tea bloom seafoam mammoth p ewc mykos molasses. I know I am short on calmag and a buffer. Times have been tough and doing what I can with what I can afford right now. Last night I saw I had a bag of seed starter and thought shit that's peat, might as well.... so I mixed 4 gal peat w perlite/ equal perlite / 3 gal compost/ 1 gal ewc / 4 gal of my soil. Ammended w 1/2 cup kelp fish bone meal 1 cup alfafa 1/4 azomite and blended in. I'm not starting anything new until after I move so figure I will let this cook for a few and see what I come up with. The coots mix on kis is 50 bucks shipped and has the kelp crab neem etc that I need to fill in the missing parts so I may be able to make my soil dirt cheap! Hahaha I do make aact typically 3 gals at a time diluted down. Havent made one in a while but the last time I dropped in some aloe gel from a plant I have at the house and it was some of the best colors I have seen on those plants. So I added some pictures, this is what they are.
1 compost from el corazon
2 the bagged ewc castings I have now
3 mulch from el corazon. The green is from my plants
4 this is the soil k have been growing in. Roots are on top because I was dumping out spent pots
5 this is the mix I made I will let cook. I put my hand in this morning and it was very warm. Been about 12 hours
6 veg tent. I know I'll catch a bunch of shit for trimming my mothers down, this is just the way I do it.
7 only 3 moms before the haircut

 

Wow haha looks really familar... pretty much exactly like my setup right down to the amendments only real difference is the smaller pots. Hopefully that compost ends up being legit, thats an awesome resource to have. If it ends up being nice stuff id try a brewing a tea with it maybe 50/50 with some EWC... everything Looks good to me bro, ive got some healthy yeilds with those lights and that style, served me well for few years. The notill way is the only way im so glad i stumbled across this technique, keep learning new things everyday nature is unbelievable -Good luck man happy harvest


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Hey thanks man! You running perpetual? What size pots are you in? The compost actually turned out to be some pretty good shit! I made a tea a few nights after I top dressed and mulched and plants looked better than they have in weeks. I had a day off yesterday and managed to source everything I need for my next round. I do need to go get 2 or 3 more cu ft of pumice tho, mix it in and let it cook. I put the mix in the 65 gal pot because I needed the room and it's a heavy son of a bitch! Here's all the inputs

 

Reggae

Hella Feed & Seed you got there, a real candy store! I'm envious!

Wet

 

It took me forever to source everything cheap! Lots and lots of running around. Got my pumice for 3 bucks a foot picked up some more today and some crushed oyster shell at 70 cents a lb. I'm anxious as hell to get planting

 

Im in 7 gal smarts make my own compost from kitchen scraps , lawn clippings, leaves, little manure and whatever other organic matter is in the yard. I also have a worm bin and make teas with my homemade castings. Been unable to source pumice & ricehulls but using some char,growstone(gravel), & little pieces of stalks that I chopped up for air aeration. Got some native earthworms as well as some redwigglers in my beds. I cover crop with white&crimson clover and mulch all my leaves stems and occasionally throw banana peels and other scraps in my pots for my worms.


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Before i got myself a AACT brewing setup i used bottled microbes and on an occasion still do when im being too lazy to clean brewing equipment or just dont have time. Pretty expensive but these 4 products are unbelievable the rootdip especially when transplanting. Lol only downside is they all smell like hot garbage and raw sewage but i guess thats what id expect concentrated bacteria and fungi to smell like.

 

Looking great: one comment I used EB stone kelp meal because it was cheap and sourced local but give kiss organics or build a soil kelp meal a try when you run out, the difference is profound, I figured kelp was kelp but I was wrong, also seems like your mix is low on IPM? Any neem and karanja meal or datamatious earth in your mix? Apologize in advance if I missed it..

 

Hey og34 beautiful plants man you got a forest going there! Where did you get your char and what do you think about that bio live? How much are those bottles running?
Nobighurry i keep hearing that about the kelp, that eb and dte isnt a high quality anymore. Guess I'll have to get some off kis or bas over the next few months. What do you think about maxicrop kelp? I put a half cup of neem meal in per cu ft and then I have neem oil for foliar. I am growing aloe so plan to use that through the cycle, still need to pick up mbp and silica. Checked out a feed store yesterday and didnt have any but got corn super cheap for making sst. Do you use essential oils in your ipm? Anyone doing homemade essential oils? Something I always wanted to get into but one thing at a time right? Happy Sunday guys!

 

Hey also wanted to add, I added 2-3 more cu ft of pumice yesterday along with the crushed oyster and my drainage seems like it will be SO much better. I had just enough left over that I filled up a 25 gal rubbermaid something like that, its 21x19x18 if I remember right. So when ready I will be putting that in my veg tent to test out and see how it runs under my led. Stoked basically got a free no till set up for veg. Will probably flower out my mothers for my first cycle and then start new ones, putting those clones into my little veg container, 4 -6 plants not sure yet. Im thinking I should be able to do 6, and when they get root bound I will cut and start over, topdress and good to go