It sounds just fine to me, should be good until they need repotting although I'd plan on giving a light dose or two of kelp extract or kelp meal tea after they are established. Personally I'd use a bit less perlite, just enough to give good drainage, beyond that it's just filler, and also consider a small amount of fine vermiculite. GG
Organic Matter, such as Compost/Castings can bind up any heavy metal in water within a very short time. Chlorine isn't that big of a deal, Chloramine on the other hand can't be bubbled out. That's where OM comes into play.
Hahahah OM or Organic Matter such as castings compost. Where you been chef haven't seen you around? Still burning behind the kine? HaGGarD
Right now i have 3 flowers growing until my real seeds arrive. My mix now is just Peat Moss and a little Perlite. It's the Miracle-Gro perlite which i just read isn't what to use for these. Plus the Moss dosen't drain well at all. I wanted to add some Humus to keep with a simple mix. What kind of ammendments should i use if i want to stay with something basic? I'm not looking for one of those mixes with 10 different ingrediants. Any advice appreciated
Anything with miracle grow, you can just go ahead and throw it in the trash lol. Man I hate that company! Yeah, they "treat" their perlite with nasty chemicals, so that is no bueno for your microbes. A good basic mix in my opinion would be: 1/2 part compost, 1/2 part worm castings for humus. Then use this for 1/3 of your overall mix. 1/3 NATURAL perlite, vermiculite, rice hulls, pumice, turface, lava rock, or diatomaceous earth . 1/3 peat moss with 1 cup lime per cubic foot to balance PH (cubic foot of ALL ingredients, not just peatmoss) That will be your base... Now to that put 2 cups kelp and 1 cup alfalfa per cubic foot (If you want more ingredients, mix them in equal parts then 2-3 cups of your overall mixture you can add to each cubic foot of soil.. with double part kelp) For example if you want kelp, alfalfa, and neem cake: Mix .5 cup neem cake, .5 cup alfalfa, 1 cup kelp, then add that to a cubic foot Now on top of that you need rock dust (don't skip out on the rock dust!).. any igneous rock that is about the same consistency as flour.. It must be small enough to pass through a 200 mesh screen. Most common would be granite, basalt, or glacial rock. Some like azomite but I prefer basalt myself. Add 4 cups of this rock dust to each cubic foot of soil. To sum it all up: 1/3 humus 1/3 peat 1/3 aeration 1 cup/cuft lime 2-3 cup/cuft nutrition (bare minimum kelp meal and alfalfa meal) 4 cups/cuft rock dust Keep moist and let cook for 30 days
my compost tea has been going now for about 36 hours now(EWC & Composted cow manure, Alaska Fish Fertilizer, Algue Marine Seaweed & Liquid Karma. I added 2 Tbs MolassesWhen it started. Am I supposed to add more Molasses now
Would I have to let is cook or the castings or lime? I'm pretty sure I read it takes lime a while to break down so I could just use ashes until that kicks in. Thanks
Hey, Wtf -ashes? I want to see the answer to that one! Ok somewhere I saw Tim Wilson say on a yahoo compost tea thread say that hand held sprayer bottles chop up the fungal strands we make in the tea. Oh f*iñg well then cuz that is all I have. I suppose they will grow more in the soil once they are there and the conditions are right. I also saw someone suggest that 1 tsp of molasses per ga will make chloramine "go away" in 1/2 hr. Whatever I suppose OM is so easy to add as molasses. I still plan to use ditch water for my ACT. Does anyone harvest their own yucca root powder for soil mixing? It would be interesting to see a chart of CEC's for the various ammendments. Anyone got that? Gonna cook a bunch of bamboo biochar tomorrow night by the full moon as I screen the old leaves from the steep forest floor
Hey, So if MG perlite is treated with chemicals then I could flush them out? I nee to know this as I am setting some clones today into new MG perlite/ewc. ?
I would soak / wash / soak / wash the perlite at least 5-6 times before using it. It's still going to contain some ferts but after the first couple weeks of veg they will be used up anyways. This happened to me on my first grow and nothing really bad happened, but I did cycle my soil for 9 weeks. Since your using castings you should be fine, as long as they aren't Wiggle Worm!
My soil mix is cooking in a 25 gal bin..its in the house cuz its a bit cold out,...Theres no holes in the bottom of the bin, Am i supposed to have my mix in something with drainage holes in it
I would say make sure you keep the lid off, and make sure you get your hands dirty mixing the soil around so you can judge the water content. I always mix the hell out of my soil the first 1-2weeks, that way nothing on the bottom goes anaerobic and I can spread out any bacteria colonies more evenly through the mix. I see mushroom growers do this with Grain Spawn, they shake the jars one the fungi has started growing to spread it around the remaining substrate. You don't need holes in the bottom of the container, but I would suggest drilling some around the top 4inchs just to create airflow. Too help you not over water this mix during the final weeks of cycling I would suggest only using a spray bottle. Gently mix any crusty edges and you should be good to go. ramble ramble ramble HTH HaGGarD