Okay, so I've got plenty of goodies laying around the place and already have a good thing going in my square foot garden, but I'm a little unfamiliar with one or two of these products and want to be sure all of my bits and pieces are working in symphony. Plus rep to anyone who cares to take a stab at it. Basic mix components I'm looking for percentages by volume with these ingredients. Sphagnum Peat Coco Coir Perlite Sand Lava Rock Vermiculite EWC Farmer D's Biodynamic compost Amendments Just tell me how much of each of these you would use in a cubic foot, please. Kelp Meal Crushed Oyster Shell Roasted and Crushed Mussel Shells Neptune's Harvest Crab Shell Espoma Garden Tone Green Sand Epsom Salt Blood Meal Bone Meal Re-usage After the chop, I apply homemade BIM to the otherwise untouched pot at a ratio of 1 tablespoon per gallon, and keep it moist with the said mix for 2-3 weeks, then toss back into my soil tote, re-amend, and apply an AACT. Any suggestions for that with the above lists would be cool to. Thanks people!
This is what I'm thinking about rolling with: Basic Mix 15% compost 15% ewc 20% coco 20% peat 10% perlite 10% lava rock 5% vermiculite 5% sand Amendments 1/2 c. garden tone 1/2 c. bone meal 1/2 c. blood meal 3/4 c. kelp 3/4 c. crab 1/3 c. mussel 1/3 c. oyster 1/3 c. green sand 2 tbsp. epsom salt Re-use 5 parts BIM treated leftovers 1 part compost 1 part EWC 1 part lava rock 1 part perlite Ammend at 75% of the above rates; excluding the oyster, greensand, epsom salt and mussel shells.
I was just reading about how coco coir is toxic to dogs. I don't know if you have a dog, but it's something to be careful of if you do. I caught my dog eating potting soil because of the manure in it. Sorry to be off topic.
I believe that's cocoa hulls and not coco coir, but either way my doggy isn't anywhere near my garden.
While I'm not a pro from my reading up to make my soil for this season I would do something like this. For your base soil 40% Coir & Peatmoss 30% Composts (EWC/Thermophilic) 30% Aeration amendments I would ditch the sand and keep the overall % of vermiculite low, also some vermiculite contains asbestos be very careful with that stuff. Amendments 1/4c per cf. of Kelp Meal Crushed Oyster Shell Roasted and Crushed Mussel Shells Neptune's Harvest Crab Shell Green Sand 1/2c per cf. of Espoma Garden Tone Blood Meal Bone Meal You shouldn't need any epsom salts as the Garden Tone has SulPoMag in it. If you feel you want to use some epsom salts just dissolve in water and water it in. I'd add some sort of rock dust can you get any bentonite or azomite? something like that would be good. I also don't know how good crushed oyster & mussel shells work as a liming agent, maybe someone else can shine some light on that. I know oyster shell flower works great as lime.
Dixon Both Limestone (not Dolomite Lime) and Oyster Shell Powder are 95% (+/-) Calcium Carbonate, i.e. they're interchangeable. Limestone usually contains 2 - 3% Magnesium. Calcite Lime is pure Calcium Carbonate like Oyster Shell Powder. Calcite Lime isn't as widely distributed as Limestone and Dolomite Lime but if it's available it too would be a good choice. The Calcium in Dolomite Lime is elemental Calcium and not Calcium Carbonate like the others I cited. The carbonate form is also the slime that covers worm castings. This is accomplished in the digestive tract of the worms. HTH LD
LD, What I'm unsure of is how the crushed stuff would break down. The crushed oyster shell I use for my chickens (Pacific Pearl) is pretty large pieces, I do throw some in my worm bin too from time to time. When the shells are in larger pieces do they break down rapidly enough to supply the calcium the soil food web needs?
I kinda doubt it. I also chunked some of the chicken oyster shell in my worm bin and even after an extended time, I see no evidence of it breaking down. Edges still sharp, nothing rounded off or smoother/worn looking. Every time I empty the bin, I take some of the old bedding/castings to add to the fresh bedding. Some of this shell has been in there for close to a year and still looks much like when I first added it. Wet
No doubt it will take a while to breakdown but if were talking calcium, lets remember cal is in a lot of ingredients. It is in ewc, bonemeal, crab meal, a lot of water has calcium in it, lime, gypsum, on and on. And magnesium can come from multiple sources as well. So slow breakdown rates are not all that problematic, and could be seen as beneficial......MIW
Sorry Dixon, I can't rep you again. Thanks for giving it a shot. Care to give it a go, Mr. Dawg and Mr. Wolverine?
Thanks, wasn't looking for any rep just hoping to pass on the information that was freely given to me.
FTGH, I think Dixon's soil ratio is a winner and IMO would serve you well. As for the amendments and minerals, I've been moving more into the "less is more" paradigm. If you've already purchased all of the above, I would mix equal parts of the amendments you have and then use 1-2 TBSP/gallon of pot size. I would do the same with the minerals in a separate mix with the same dosage. The reason I would keep the minerals separate is that I've found that when I mix my minerals into my meals, there is settling and the minerals migrate to the bottom of the container. Keeping them separate insures that my pots get a correct dose of both fertilizer and minerals. HTH, chunk
Chunk, how do you tell the minerals have settled to the bottom? Sounds reasonable seeing on how minerals break down slow, but it's a new one for me. I mix up soil and let it sit for months before I use it, and I can't remember having too much of anything in any pot. Only that the mix gets better with time. I mean i had some mixes that were not all that good, ( I had a several month period of lime problems or what I thought was lime problems) but all the pots were about the same. I do shovel mix it once a month or so, and I keep it damp. I try to give it a compost tea a week or so before I use it.....MIW
MIW I'm was talking about when I mix the minerals with the fertilizer meals before it goes into the soil. I mix equal parts of my meals and used to add the minerals to the mix. I would notice that when I got down to the bottom of the bucket that there was a lot more mineral than meal. chunk
OK gotcha. I mix up soil in bulk on a tarp, then store like 90 gallons at a time and just work off that untill i need more......MIW