One thing i never understood is if you have all these things you use to make your growing medium i.e compost, bat guano etc. If you grow using these things, how do you know when to start feeding? Eventually all the nutrients in the mix will be used up and how are you supposed to know when that time has come?
In the beginning it does seem very confusing, but it's not really, you just need to know your shit, literally. Everything breaks down over time, and the nutrients are released over the course of that time. Some soil amendments will remain in the soil for months and years, like egg-shells. Other amendments will breakdown rapidly, or in many cases, are stuffed with readily available nutrition. The best way to know when a particular nutrient is starting to deplete, is to watch your plants. They will soon tell you if you need to add magnesium, or whatever. But it's even easier than that... The way soil functions is to hold a supply of nutrients in an "almost ready" state. When the plant needs something, it will tell the micro-herd what it requires, and they will respond with the exact blend. The secret to good soil, then, it to always keep it well stocked. It's very hard to over feed the soil if you stick within sensible limits. What you are aiming for is a living machine of a soil, able to breakdown the raw particles into readily available nutrition at a moment's notice. This is the function of the micro-herd, a cute name encompassing the thousands of species of fungi, microorganisms, small insects and what-not that live and die in quality soil. So the organic gardener pays attention to building a vibrant living soil, and keeps it well stocked with raw organic materials. Because so much is known about Canabis' nutritional requirements, the crafty soil grower can anticipate the plant's needs, and provide a range of medium-quick breakdown soil feeds, to ensure that the nutrition for each stage of the plant's life cycle is ready in advance, building the "back-bone" soil all the while. So the nutrients will never be completely used up. You keep adding more in the form of compost, teas, the odd liming, various meals, seaweed, guanos and all the rest. If you go too far in either direction with something, the plants will let you know, displaying symptoms of deficiency or toxicity. If you make a habit of compost/wormcast/guano teas, you need less feeding, overall, and the soil will be healthier. With a little experience, as you get to know your soil, and the various organic amendments available to you, keeping your soil in optimum health becomes a more natural process, and it won't be nearly so confusing. Perhaps the attached document will be of some use to you. -mu
Thats awesome information, thanks heaps man. So basically, you dont even really need to add any of those liquid fertilizers? Its sounds to me like what you're saying is that if you just use organic fertilizers that you add to the soil, then that means that it is alot harder to over-fertilize and get nute burn? I might start trying this... but i already have plain potting mix and i have been adding liquid fertilizers (and its hard to know when to feed it because the last time i did after a week of feeding it plain water it gets nute burn on the tips of the leaves). My plants are about 4-5 weeks into flowering, so would i just place whichever organic fertilizer like bat shit or blood and bone straight on top of the soil? I cant exactly mix it in there or i'll disturb the roots...
Guano and compost/wormcast are best applied as teas, even foliar feeds. If that's what you mean by liquid fertilizers, then keep on applying them, they rarely do any harm. If you mean something out of a bottle, then I dunno. You can burn plants organically, especially if you use a lot of high-Nitrogen feeds; some guano teas/urine/nettle brews, etc. But a small amount of nute burn isn't going to hurt a plant, and many people use it as an indication that they have pushed the feeding to the very limits, and then keep it there. At your stage in flowering, you're looking to give them a dose of something with high P+K within the next few days, perhaps a vintage bat guano tea with comfrey liquid to go. Then some high phosphorus guano/wormcast teas for the next couple of weeks (with maybe a little K thrown in), then plain water for the last one or two. You can re-use your soil, too. Here's a recent thread about that. That's when you would add things like blood and bone, in preparation for your next set of girls, either mixed in, or as a top-dressing. There alternatives to these animal products, by the way. Alfalfa meal is getting popular, for one. The soil needs at least a week (more like two) to cool down after mixing in new amendments, the heat generated by the microbe activity could damage tender roots, though well-vegged mature clones might handle it okay. If you apply amendments as top dressings, there's less chance of damaging the roots with heat, as only a small amount is worked into the soil with each watering, but of course, they take longer to work down to the roots. However... "No-till", or "never-till" gardening is about doing exactly that. You never dig or mix up the soil. The idea is to leave the ("mycorrhizal") fungi unharmed. This works best if you use a large flower bed. If your fungi is strong, they have the ability to transport nutrients up and down the soil, so if you can build good fungi in the soil, it means you shouldn't have to disturb it ever, just top-dress, water in, and let the fungi do their stuff. Eventually the fungi colonize the entire flower bed, and do more nutrient exchange work than the roots themselves. Clever stuff, nature. Add a few worms, and you have something pretty close to the great outdoors, I'd say. -mu
All sounds good, although i do have a slight problem namely that bat guano isnt very easy to find here. The liquid fertilizers i was referring to were out of the bottle, not teas, by the way. I have no knowledge of making teas (except for the kind you drink). At your stage in flowering, you're looking to give them a dose of something with high P+K within the next few days, perhaps a vintage bat guano tea with comfrey liquid to go. Then some high phosphorus guano/wormcast teas for the next couple of weeks (with maybe a little K thrown in), then plain water for the last one or two. Do you make these tea's and use them instead of liquid fertilizers that you get in a bottle? If so that makes sense, i just need some recipes because i have no idea about quantities (i havent even heard of comfrey liquid) or how often to apply. I dont know how to make these tea's that people speak of. Do you know anywhere i can go to get some? Do you mean add live worms to my soil? Wouldn't they damage roots? Its pretty tightly packed in there... This does all sound pretty good though. I'd love to be able to ditch my bottled fertilizers and go for organic shit. From the sounds of it, the plants will only use what they need with organics, wheras with bottled shit you can easily burn them... So many questions... I appreciate your help.
But you have access to the internet, and it's very easy to send away a money order. Maybe $15 for a kilo, plus postage. Better idea: find out where bats live. Importantly, you must learn how to extract their guano in a way that causes them no disturbance. I can't stress enough how uncool it is to mess with bats. You might also like to install a bat-box at your home. You can buy or make them, and make them in such a way that you can extract the guano without disturbing the bats. Did I mention how important this is? At least in the UK, if you erect a bat box, you need to tell the local authorities. Most bats are protected species. But they do welcome anyone doing that. Lack of decent nesting sites is their greatest threat. There are also local alternatives you could use. If you are serious about near-free organic gardening, start keeping worms. As well as a great way to dispose of your garbage (on top of the compost heap you should definitely have), it's pure manna for your plants. Rabbit guano is very good, too, as are lots of things. I could rabbit on about worms all day, but I won't. Google "vermiculture". Well, I don't have any fertilizer in bottles, apart from brews I've made, and a bottle of maxicrop seaweed extract I got as a gift (great stuff!). You can make seaweed extract yourself, though, if you have access to seaweed. Yes. Make it. Get a bucket, say 5L. Put in a handful of compost (or wormcast, or guano, depending on the stage of growth your plants are at) add a teaspoon of molasses, top up with water to around 3L. Add an air-line (aquarium pump, with a weight attached to the end of the air-line, keep it down) and let it bubble for 24 hours+ That's it. If you want, you can add a dash of soy, dash of lemon, dash of urine, some sawdust (for fungi), seaweed extract, yeast extract, or any number of things. Basically, you brew your own custom feed. The above tea would be diluted around 1:4 with plain water, and applied maybe once a week. It's hard to give exact figures because different plants and setups have different requirements. I generally add a further half teaspoon of molasses, because the original molasses will have mostly been used up by the growing bacteria. Hunt around for the 3LB molasses manual. Magical stuff. A jar of good blackstrap molasses is about £1.40, though you can buy spend over £20 on the same amount with a label that says "carbo-load" or "bacterial booster" or whatever. Same stuff. Instead of all water, you can add other liquids to the tea when you dilute it, and that's the secret of custom feeds. Comfrey liquid is very useful being a complete fertiliser, and very high in Potassium. Check out the link in Sapanishfly's sig for details of how to make comfrey juice (with an addition by me at the end of the thread). It's easy. Lots of other plants can be similarly utilized. Nettle brews make a wonderful veg feed, for instance. As does Urine. The same basic tea can be diluted differently for different plants, so one batch can not only feed your flowering plants, but your vegging plants, too. Compost is the most important ingredient for the organic gardener. If you don't have a compost heap, start one. You can even do it indoors, in big plastic tubs. Compost is another subject I could go on about until the cows come home. By the way, that same batch of tea, diluted with twice as much water, will work as a great foliar feed, for any "quick-fix" you might need to provide, or as a general tonic for your plants. All the more reason to add worms! One of their main function (apart from shitting pure manna) is to aereate the soil. Damage roots? Are you serious? Roots LOVE IT! It tickles, my plants tell me. At any rate, trust nature, she designed worms to live around roots. I grow in a 200 Litre "bed". So it's almost like a slice of the outdoors, and stuffed with all sorts of life, invisible and visible; as well as the worms, there are soil mites, other insects, mushrooms, nettles and various "companion" plants, you name it. It's alive! I enjoy helping. As I see it, if even one person ditches their bottles and really gets down with their plants, goes deep organic, my work is more than done. It's fun. I remember my first compost tea, I didn't have a clue, and put in way too much urine, and yeast extract and the whole thing didn't exactly smell "sweet and earthy" like my more recent teas. But it worked great, and the plants responded with a flush of beautiful growth. Now I just throw a few things in a bucket, whisk it up, chuck in my air-line and leave it. A day later, delicious! And only a couple of minutes "work". It's easy when you know how. -mu
Worms and worm castings are two different considerations. Worms in the soil are for aeration, you will never get enough worms in your pot to generate enough worm castings to make much difference. Worm castings are a fertilizer or soil supplement and do not aerate the soil. Both are beneficial.
Here's a pic of the handy wee thing I found in my hardware store. I suspend my air-pump from a bungee hanging directly over the bucket (from a clothes-line) which keeps it centered in the bucket. And the widget in the pic keeps it at the bottom. -mu ps. you are correct toastybiz, worms in your soil cannot replace wormcast from a proper worm bin, it's just a bonus. However, the more worms you have in your flower bed, the less wormcast you need to add. Not that you can really have too much of this particular good thing!
You are a legend. I dont think anybody else on this forum would go to lengths like that to explain to a noob what you have. I understand everything, its all becoming clear to me. But i do have further questions before i go home via the plant store to make some tea... 1) When using these tea's, does the same principle apply where you said that the plant uses it as it needs it, thus making it hard to get nute burn? Or do i need to be very conservative like with bottled shit? 2) Why do you need the air pump? Is that just to speed up the growth of bacteria and/or mix everything better? 3) Why can i not just pour the tea straight onto the soil? If it needs diluting, then surely diluting it with further nutrients (namely comfrey liquid) wouldnt actually be diluting at all? 4) I know it all depends on the setup and how old and what condition the plants are in but i would like some advice from your supreme knowledge (for which i will not hold responsible at all if it all turns pear shaped) about my situation. I have 2 plants about 5 weeks into flowering under a 600watt hps and they are going okay, a few leaves are yellowing and some of the lower smaller leaves are curling under (which may be because theres not as much light getting there). Plants are roughly 4-5 feet high and averagely bushy. What ingredients would you recommend for a tea for these ladies? 5) When i get home im going to fish out some worms from the garden and throw them onto my soil... do i want big worms or small worms? Again, thanks alot, i really appreciate it.
Compost teas are quite concentrated, so it is possible to burn your plants with them, depending on the tea, and the plant. I'm happy with the 1:4 ratio for compost/wormcast teas. A lot of the tea's power comes from the way it activates other nutients available in the soil/other ingredients, so a little goes a long way. How you make your tea has an impact, too. Pure guano teas (without compost) can be diluted maybe 1:1, but I haven't experimented much with those. Yes, it's to make the bacteria replicate quickly, particularly the aerobic (read: good) bacteria. The more oxygen dissolved in the water, the more aerobic it will be. This is good. You could get off with giving it a whisk every few hours, if you don't have an air-pump. They are very cheap, though. Well, let's say you were looking to make five litres of "feed". Wait a minute, this will also cover question 4, I'll skip down to there... Low light probably isn't the issue. But at this stage of the game, I wouldn't worry too much. Get the tea in there and they'll be fine. Let's say you were looking to make five litres of "feed"... You've got a nice three litres of tea that's been brewing for a day or more. You added a spoon of vintage bat guano, a handful of wormcast, tsp molasses, and a few goodies, like yeast extract (marmite), dash of lemon, dash of urine, tsp concentrated comfrey liquid, tsp seaweed extract, etc, and now it smells lovely! (it really does!) In a bucket you pour a litre of this tea. Because it's around week five you want to add lots of immediately available P + K (and personally, I'd start doing that earlier, in preparation), so you dump another spoon of the guano in there (which is still proabbly less than the label tells you to), and then some comfrey brew. This stuff is usually diluted 1:20-1:50, so you treat the rest of the solution as plain water, and base the concentration on that. So that's 100-250ml of comfrey brew. Any extras can be added like this, treating the total volume as plain water and calculating the amount required from that. In practice you'll usually need less because of the synergistic effect of the other ingredients. With any regime, it's best to start with smaller amounts, and gradually increase the strength until you're happy with it. Watch your plants. Once all your extras are in, you top up to the required five litres with plain water, whisk it all together, and feed immediately. I make a three litre tea because I usually need around 9-12 litres of feed at one time, and I don't like to waste any of the tea. Left-over tea can be used on houseplants, compost heaps, etc. Any solids can by chucked on top of your soil as a tasty top-dressing for your ladies, perhaps sprinked around the stem. Wrong kind of worms. Regular garden worms are too fat and slow, and their casts aren't of a high enough quality for our needs; you want "red wrigglers" or equivalent. You can either a) buy some. They are quite cheap. Or b) grab some out of a compost heap. A grocery bag (sort of size) of compost from a good compost heap will get you around 30-100 worms (and quite a few eggs). If you know someone with a sizable compost heap, ask them for a bagful of the stuff. You can use these worms to start your own worm bin. They reproduce pretty quickly, so it won't be long before you have your own wormcast to play with. A few in your soil is a good idea, particularly if you grow in a large soil bed. Any more than one, and they will reproduce (I sometimes put only one in a small pot, so it won't reproduce). I dropped ten red wrigglers into my new 200L flower bed about five weeks ago, there's probably dozens now. Big worms are best, but small worms get big fairly quickly. Every time I stir my compost I pull out a handful of big fat ones - they seem to sprout from nowhere - and drop them in a worm bin. Workers, that's what they are. Have fun! -mu
Excellent. Just a few more things though... What will these tea's do to the pH of my soil? Do i need to be testing and adjusting the pH of these teas? I'm going to start a compost heap. Got any tips for a beginner? What kinds of shit should i NOT put on there? Should i start with a base of grass clippings and then throw all my leftover food on it and other biodegradable substances? Once it gets going, do i take the compost from the bottom of the pile and use it to make teas? Wont maggots get in there? I now understand the concept of making teas. Thanks to you i also now know what kinds of shit have the kinds of nutrients i need for whatever stage of development my plants are in. I guess the only problem im going to run into is that im going to a) Put too much/little of something into the tea b) Overfeed my plants with it and/or dilute it incorrectly based on the shit i put in there. I dont have access to bat shit, i dont have a compost heap ready at the moment, and i dont have any comfrey leaves in my garden. Im going to have to rig up some sort of concoction with what little resources i have. I need a tea that is high in P and K for my flowering plants.
pH, I don't bother with it much. Teas should be around neutral. I did test one, once, it was just under 7. Compost tips: The best tip is... READ! READ READ! Compost is easy, and when you know what you are doing, very simply to setup and maintain. But you gotta know what you are doing first. Learn about the importance of nitrogen/carbon ratios (you layer them). As well as the ingredients, your compost needs warmth, and air-flow, etc. Harvest compost in full batches. Compost should be left to complete its process before you use it. Wormcast, you can take a handful out of your worm bin and no harm's done, but compost must be finished. With the right techniques, you can make compost in a few weeks. Urine is a great compost activator, by the way. Dilute around 1:4. A few links to get you started... http://www.knowledgehound.com/topics/compost.htm http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/organics/HomeCompost/ http://www.csrnet.org/csrnet/Worms/wormbind.html http://www.avant-gardening.com/composting.html -mu ps. bat shit is cheap to buy online, if you want to experiment with that. Comfrey (Bocking 14 variety is best) can be bought as root cuttings, you plant them somewhere, and just let the comfrey fet machine do its thing.