LD, good idea about elaphent douching and breeding. I haven't thought about it but your probably right they could put the cal mag to good use. Other solutions for PM listed are urine, saliva, and any bottled nutrient, and the hydro store solution: vinegar, but I guess those aren't as useful as ca-mg for elaphent douching, which its too bad. so too late about bone meal. It's mixed in. I'll also skip the bat guano, similar deal with foreign standards, questionable harvesting, etc ... "quagmire-swell" hopefully i'll harvest comfrey before flowering, i've read it prepares to flower in early spring so it may be harvested then. updated mix- 12 gallons pumice 17 gallons sphagnum peat 4 gallon slimy compost 4 gallon CG topsoil crab - 11 cups rock dust- 10 cups neem cake- 6 oyster flour -6 k-mag- 1.5 cups bone meal- 3 alfalfa - 4 cups kelp- 5 cups total around 39 gallons
yeah the society for animal cruelty recieves a notification any time someone tyes the word 'elephant douche.' better watch your back man.
50% Organic Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss (Alaska Peat brand specifically) 25% Organic Parboiled Rice Hulls 25% Homegrown EWC To each 1 c.f. of potting soil I add the following: 4 - 5 cups of Canadian Glacial Rock Dust 1.5 cups of a mix I make up that consists of equal parts of kelp, neem and crab meals Water on most days with a weekly application of some botanical tea - Comfrey, Yarrow or Horsetail or a combination of 2 or all 3. Dat's it. LD (So this would be lumperdawgz recipe?)
Now is it advised to watch the Ph of the soil? I understand that the plant would be taking nutrients from it at random points but I cant imagine it would cause a huge shift in the Ph..unless the water would flush it out. I would assume that this would last from its re potting from seedling to main veg all the way to flowering? (Its shall be an interesting adventure to find all these products)
ph is not a worry with organic, living soils. What happens is that the plant roots give off exudates that attract appropriate microorganisms to the rhizosphere (root zone). All of these microorganisms adjust the ph for the plant. Due to the CEC nature (causing nutrients to stick) of good soil and the gelatin like goo that the microorganisms create around the root ball, nutrients don't flush out. There are a few of us here that are exploring no till/reuse of soil grows. Even fewer of us have actually done it and found it to be a very viable way to grow. Check the organic growers forum here and search for no till grows. In the mean time you should also read this thread and ANYTHING by LumperDawgz. http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/650139-organic-higher-learning-lumperdawgz.html Eco12 and MicrobeMan are also advanced thinkers here at GC, in the living soil paradigms.
Very interesting! I've always heard that reuse of soil was frowned upon due to the plants "waste" being dumped into the soil. Thanks for the info! Cant wait to spoil my plant
plants don't dump waste. They reuse nearly everything. The key is nutrient cycling which the soil microorganisms help with. There have been many many of us that have been deceived for all our lives by the petro chemical industries approach to farming and gardening. Luckily with the combination of established organic studies (Rodale Institute, Demeter, Oregon Tilth) and new research in soil life, we are beginning to see the beauty of nature in the soil and how to work in harmony with some very basic paradigms. This results in healthier plants and less cost to the gardner.
Why go through all that shit when ypu can grow beasts with promix perlite and fuckin wormcastings...when you use his soil I take it you just water the whole time no nutes added..
If im spemding.all this time to grow life in my soil shouldnt I use at least some of that soil the next time around for the microbs?
Yes. You may wish to look at this. I found it exciting to read. A valuable post and a high benchmark imo. http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/333940-post-your-organic-tea-recipe-79.html#post13533989
I think what we are tying to do is to re-create what happens naturaly outdoors all the time. Our attempts may be feeble at times, but nature does not change out soils, does it? In nature there is little waste, everything gets used......MIW
So say I use this mixture of soil, should I reuse it? I would not know what deficiencies the soil would have. I understand the process of live soil, I used to live in the middle of nowhere and as posted in another thread there was a patch of nettle that would always grow and over years and years it became a pile that everything started to grow out of. Very rich stuff. But what about all the bugs and such? I cant imagine it would be very good to have a bunch of bugs in your soil, no? Or is there other means of "purifying" the rich soil? My grandfather used to be a farmer and kept a nice compost for years and still does, does it matter what you put in the compost? We used to throw everything non-cooked veggies, egg shells, nut shells, etc. Is compost good to use in a soil mixture? I just cant seem to wrap my head around this. There are so many things that could make a good soil mixture.
This is absolutely blowing my mind, now you make "teas" and use them as nutrient. I've never thought to myself why I needed chemicals to do a natural thing. Opening my mind to a whole new prospective. Thanks to you "old timers" thank you so very much!
I know this thread is about soil but I was wondering if these teas would smell horrid if you were to make a batch and how long you can keep the tea. I read about putting nettle plants into a bucket with water and letting it ferment but I cant imagine that its nearly as good as the others. Ive read this: Organic higher learning from Lumperdawgz. I live in an apartment so I'm not too sure how much of this I can accomplish. Also in LD's soil recipe is says to each one c.f of potting soil add: Does this mean cubic ft? Sorry for asking so many questions there's alot of information to process.
This below is just a reprint of something I was telling someone else, but it would apply well to you. So I copied and pasted it for you. I mixed mine according to two principals, 1, with 2 kids in college it better not cost much, an 2, diversity of ammendments would mean that 'it's all in there somewhere'. I reused everything from the cups for germination to the soil itself... You can make 10 gallons of soil with 'stuff' in the list, or hundreds of gallons, just scone it in... and water the mix. Diversity isn't just for large amounts of dirt...go pound up some rocks, find some galvanized nails for the zinc, make some rust for the iron, collect some egg shells, roast them and pound them up, save some coffee grounds, go out and find a single bag of alfalfa pellets or chaff, even small amounts of dirt should contain a wealth of 'stuff'. It's not expensive, just sucks up time and thinking. So soil can be made with 'anything nutritive'. 1 plant or 50. This is the general compostion of my hot soil or the finishing soil, the one the plant goes into when it's mature and ready to transition to flowering in. A massive bag of cocoa shells (gawd the smell is phenomenal) the size 2 king pillows, composted. 50 pounds of alfalpha pellets, composted. 10lbs of stinging nettles, composted. A big bag of straight 'dirt', 50 lbs, mixed the compost into the bag of dirt. Spagnum peat moss, the big bag, the size of 2 king sized pillows, mixed into the pile. Washed sand, a child sized pillow amount, it was really heavy, mixed into the pile. 6 pound of crushed oyster shells, mixed in. Marble, granite, onyx, limestone, quarts, sandstone, other pretty rocks I crushed myself. I got them for free from the rock place the gardeners and builders use. mixed in, about 10 lbs. Zinc and Iron dust, the zinc cost 2 bucks and the rust i made myself, a 1/2 cup of each. mixed in. Sul-po-mag in a 50lbs bag, used a couple of gallons in scoopes. Mixed in. Sea Bird guano (high P), 6 lbs, mixed in. Organic fish meal, 4 lbs, mixed in. Neem meal, Dr Earth's 5lbs, mixed in. Dolamite lime, 2 gallons, after I pounded it into powder, mixed in. A bag of ground woods, fir needles 40lbs, mixed in, yes I like wood chips. Bone meal, 4 lbs, mixed in. Blood meal, 4 lbs, mixed in. Azomite, 10lbs, mixed in. Softrock Phosphate, 4 lbs, mixed in. Greensand 4lbs, mixed in. Kelp, five local varieties I collected. a 2.5 gallon bucket of well cleaned and blendered, mixed in. Kelp mix, 8 lbs, mixed in. Perlite, the bag the size of 2 king pillows, mixed in. Crushed red bricks from the 1920. Clay that I 'mined' from local area next to the river. Dried and screened it. bio-ag tm-7 Bio-ag VAM EWC's, a lot...lot lot. Compost from my composter. The seedlings grow in peat moss, perlite, washed sand, some VAM mixed into the dry stuff and watered with aloe juiced water. Any other stage of planting goes into containers of about 50% or less of the hot soil mixed with lots of the seedling soil mix to make it less 'hot' for a small plant. The pile is pretty big, actually it a few piles, it has good microlife... if I don't keep an eye on it, it all sneaks around in my basement. And I realize that people think of this as 'overkill', but it works and that's what I have for soil now...so I'll be using it forever. Some people only have like the key 5 ammendmends in their soil, but I think that with diversity, you cover your bases better. I'm kind of a scattershot mom tho, you don't have to 'aim' a shotgun, just get it pointed in the general vicinity...
Skunk, I tried to rep you again!! That's a pretty awesome recipe, and kudos for all the manual labor. About what %age of clay did you use? And why couldn't I ever be so lucky to meet a woman like you?
I just went out and got the truck stuck in snow...my hubby says you can have me I mined about a gunny sacks worth, but probably kept a dried and screened gallon of each. Pysht clay and dungeness clay...it's heavy, but the purpose was to add mineral content. Dungeness clay is red, pysht is pure white. I got a 'radioactive' lecture last time I posted this tho, depends who's trolling.