Since we have beating around the bush on this subject in some threads from time to time, let's explore it a little. Personally I don't know how I would or could design a soil that could survive a year or more in in a plastic bag and have viable microbes, dormant microbes, maybe, anaerobic microbes? Probably. And then how much nutrients should a manufacturer add? Too little and it's not a ready to grow soil, too much and you have burning. Then there is the sticky problem of age. From my own soil building I have found once very hot soils can mellow with time from nutrient cycling. But the key to nutrient cycling, in my eyes anyway, is still living microbes. I doubt the bigger players like FFOF add much in what they advertise like EWC. Maybe I should be amazed it works as well as it does. And I know it will work. Never used it myself but I have seen numerous decent grows from folks using this, plus quite a few not too good grows using the same FFOF. So let's keep this on bagged ready to use soil, and see where it goes. Maybe our brighter bulbs can tell us how they would make a bagged soil......MIW
Excellent idea for a topic and desperately needed here at GC. If we do a good comparison of bagged soils, then we can send the noobs here to read up on it, rather than repeating ourselves a bazillion times.
I've grown out plants with straight from the bag potting mix from Home Depot. In fact, I used it in a side by side grow with kelp as my only nutrient. This soil is manufactured in the NW and is $5.27 cu/ft here in Washington. I grew out a Hash Girl and it yielded 71 grams. The details are buried in my journal if anyone is interested, but it shows that you can grow cannabis without breaking the bank if you know how to identify a soil with potential. chunk
Another off the shelf soil that I would recommend is Gardner and Bloome's Blue Ribbon Potting Soil. Same deal......it's about 6 bucks a cu/ft. I've had numerous successful grows using it with the addition of addition EWC and Dr. Earth's Tomato, Vegetable and Herb dry blended fertilizer. chunk
ugh. I was so glad to give Black Gold up. budlover1234, you may wish to read the topic link below. http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/988037-black-gold-organic-soil.html
The op at that link admitted $29 was a typo. If you look at Lumperdawgz post (#13) about Black Gold, you'll get what I was driving at.
Yeah, i read that post. It didn't change my opinion of the stuff, it does the job perfectly fine. Almost everything i grow is outdoors anyways.. although next year i might just go with FFOF considering it's only a couple more $ per bag.
I would have no problem using any of the potting soils that I've posted for my garden and would definitely suggest any of them to new growers as they learn how plants actually grow - kinda like a 12-Step Program from shopping at indoor garden stores. LD
Well, I think the thrust of this thread was finding good potting soil for beginner indoor growers, although I could be wrong. Given that you are growing outdoors, I would suspect most of your success is due to that rather than the Black Gold. Do you add anything else to your outdoor mix? Compost? Manures? Etc? And if it does the job perfectly fine, why are you considering a more expensive bag of soil mix?
Bar Harbor Blend is our organically approved, all-purpose potting soil. It is a rich, dark brown and full bodied, designed for re-potting house plants, planting hanging baskets, window boxes and all containers. Bar Harbor Blend is made with lobster and aspen bark compost, long staple horticultural grade sphagnum peat moss and perlite. Like all compost-based soils, this too requires less watering. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Penobscot Blend is our popular all-purpose planting mix. A blend of compost and peat, it is ideal for planting annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees or conditioning gardens, beds and borders. Penobscot Blend is made with fully matured salmon, blueberry and mussel compost (2/3) and sphagnum moss peat (1/3). Mussel shells are Penobscot Blend's unique ingredient. The shell fragments help aerate and add texture to your soil, which helps improve root growth. According to some of our customers it also helps control slugs when applied as a top-dressing so the shells dot the soil surface. LD turned me on to this company here in Maine some time ago. I cannot give them enough thumbs up for thier very high quality products, which have helped me to have the success that I do have today. Anyone in new England looking for high quality soil products needs to at least consider this company. jerry.
I do think that by using some of the higher quality per-mixed, bagged potting soils shown here, that this would be a very good and fine way of turning skeptical new organic growers on to our way of gardening. Once they use these bagged soils, and see the perfectly fine results, it would be a way of introducing folks to organics for the first several times, and then they might be more apt to start learning more about our form of organics and slowly modifying the bagged soils and in the end, mixing thier own. Great, fantastic thread MIW. Like Wee said, this was a very much needed discussion here. I think that perhaps we sometimes scare people off by telling them right away that the only way to grow/garden organically is to mix your own soil and use FPE's and AACT's. This is really a perfect slow introduction into our world. Once the results are seen, which they inevitably will be, I think that people would then, at that point, be much more apt to start delving deeper - moreso than 'scaring them off" right away with all the talk of assorted ammendments and mixing ratios and such. I bet alot are nervous and scared that they'll screw it up, and so never take the plunge. Thanks again MIW. jerry.
chri3715 Sunshine Mixes are what soil mixers use as the base for potting soil. Here's the list of ingredients posted at Sun Gro's web site: That mix will not grow a plant. You have to do 'something' and organic growers will add a form of humus - either thermal compost and/or worm castings. Or you have to buy some 'nute program' which in effect turns the Sunshine Mix into a hydroponic medium. So the mixes labeled Sunshine Mix #X or the professional from Pro-Mix are what you can use as a framework for a soil though there are far less expensive to use the same Sphagnum available at Home Depot and mix this base up for 1/3 the price of Sunshine Mix #4 or Pro-Mix BH or whatever. Does that make sense? LD