Hey anyone willing and able to help a guy out! I really want to build a living organic soil. No more measuring out the Fox Farm trio. I just want to water my plants and watch them thrive in their little ecosystem (or at least get as close to that as possible). I currently live in a developing nation. A tiny little island in the Caribbean. While we do have a lot of things here, I can't run to a garden center or anything like that. I have been trying to find a way to use what I have available to me to mix up something that resembles some of the popular recipes here, but I am struggling. My hope is that I can show what I have access to, and some of you more experienced folks may be able to come up with something that could work (either water only, or at least water only "most" of the time. Please note: -I am working in a small DIY tent in my bedroom (smell and size matter). -My wife is fine with short term bad smells, but not long term. -I am going 12/12 from 3 weeks to keep plants as small as possible. -I'm nearly out of pH up, pH down, and test strips - none of which I have been able to find on island Here is what I have available: Base: Black Gold Natural & Organic Potting Soil Plus Fertilizer Fox Farms Original Planting Mix Pro-Mix BX Mycorrhizae Coco Coir - forgot which brand name Hoffman horticulture perlite Vermiculite - forgot which brand Dry Nutrients: Natures Solution Sea Kelp Nature's Solution Organic Sea Kelp - Environment Celebration Natures Care Organic Blood Meal Espoma Organic Earthworm Castings Encap earthworm castings Roots Organic Seabird Guano Jobes Organics All Purpose and Vegetable and Tomato Espoma Urea Liquid Nutrients: Fox Farm Trio (not what I want) Alaska Fish Fertilizer Neptune's Harvest Tomato and Veg (not organic) Neptune's Harvest Organic Seaweed Plant Food 0-0-1 Hydrated Lime No Rock Dust I also live by the ocean, so could potentially harvest kelp? I don't know what I would do with it when I was done. Finally, I am getting to know the family that runs the local organic farm on the island. They are Rastas, and I have chatted with them about growing. They will hook me up with some of their compost/personal soil blend, but they are worried about how it will perform on a grow in a potted plant. They grow outdoors (which is technically illegal here, so I can't do it). If anybody can think of something that will work, I would appreciate you for the rest of my life. Worst case scenario, I'll have to find someone traveling back to the sates soon and make them bring me some pH up/down and test strips so that I can resume my Fox Farms Trio growing. Thank you so much!
I can help with the pH up/down problem! Lemon juice or citric acid will work amazing as pH down! I use them instead of any of the stuff you would buy and they are great. I've heard they break down pretty quick though, I only use it right before watering. I believe potassium bicarbonate or baking soda can be used as pH up, correct me if I'm wrong! I can't help you with the organic soil issue though... I have personally tried it in the past and always end up feeding with nutes! If you can get your hands on it, Advanced Nutrients has a line of fully certified organic nutes if you truly want to stay organic! 100% Organic OIM | Advanced Nutrients Not sure why the local farms soil wouldn't work in a pot if it works outdoors!! You should give it a try and see what happens, maybe try out a few of the soils available to you and see which works best?? I use a soil that is technically supposed to be water only but even they suggest using nutes around week 6, and I actually start using nutes from the start so I probably am not the one to help you with that lmao
With those choices, you can make your own no till pretty much to the recipe. You may need to use the jobes tomato fert if you cannot source some of the high N stuff, or you could just use the blood meal. Many don't like that product, but it will supply N! I see no reason you couldn't make a super soil with what's available, and I would presume somewhere compost is also available. Take good notes you can come back to later in case you run into a deficiency.
if you want living soil you need to read about Korean natural farming, search for cris trump video on YouTube he have a web page too, he teach how to make homemade fertilizer and farm microbes and mycorrhizae, very easy. in the Caribbean you can find some good soil no need to buy soil, I use the red clay soil from local mount not contaminated with trash and human. and I mix it with compost I made or buy if I don't have at the moment. you have all the inputs and stuff to do great thing,
Awesome idea! If I can’t find a way to make this work, I’ll definitely try those methods to get my pH right.
Excellent news. I’ll have to focus my search to more of the no till stuff instead of searching for living soil or super soil. Do you know any recipes/links to recipes off the top of your head that I could make (or get close to)? I’m going to be searching around, but if anything jumps out to you as something I ought to look into, I’d greatly appreciate the lead.
Sadly no pics. Dropped and shattered my iPhone a few months ago, so I don’t have any way to take pictures. It takes forever to import stuff. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a digital camera so I can post some pics of grows soon.
Do you have your own compost? Or access to compost? When going no till it isn’t really recommended to do containers smaller than. 2cubic feet/15 gallons. You should maybe just do one larger fabric container around 20-30 gallons and plant multiple small plants in there. I would focus on getting some good compost and then get some worm castings to make up your 1/3 hummus portion. if all you can get is perlite use perlite but call some landscaping stores and look for graded pumice or lava stone instead. Should be lava stone and pumice if you are near volcanic islands! Also try try try to find rock dust or order it from amazon, also make your own biochar if possible and soak it in an aerated compost/ casting tea. Try going to stone cutters/ masons/ grave stone makers and ask if they have any fines around or if you can dust off their machine and fill a 5 gallon bucket with granite dust. Tell them it’s for your vegetable garden Seems like you are just missing out on your rock dust, and compost, unless you’ve made your own compost and have a good amount to use. This home made tent, is it an actual zipable tent? I’m curious as to what’s going on there. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
if you have a volcano or a volcanic mountain on your island you have rock dust laying around somewhere near there.
I doubt you would find rock dust fine enough for use in a soil mix, rock or pebbles yes but not dust. At least not in the amount you would need. Dust is the byproduct of rock query when they process the rocks they mine.
I was thinking that weather erosion would slowly break down the rocks over time creating rock dust. It could just be my stoner science kicking in.
No. It is a big outdoor garbage can. For seedlings and smaller plants, it has a PVC frame that I stick in it to run my lights on so I can adjust them up and down. I can only flower a single plant in it, so I have to pick a "winner" from my young plants early (thus the 12/12 from seed). Once I have a single plant in there, the lights mount to the top (which is actually the bottom for the garbage can). I have two passive inlets on the bottom, and cut a hole and mounted a 10" fan to pull air out of the top. It is kept light tight with weather stripping, and cardboard light traps. I was shocked I could get it light tight. No visible light coming out when I am in a dark room with the lights on in the tent. I also put a gopro inside the tent, turned lights off inside, and shined a super bright flashlight around the whole thing and no light got in. I also have a 4 inch fan circulating air inside of the tent. It stays around 75-80 in my 75 degree bedroom. The last few days it has been exceptionally hot outside, but I have been able to maintain temperatures by sticking frozen water bottles in the tent and switching them out a few times per day.
Yeah unfortunately it is just mixed in everything else (sand, soil, etc.) and it just ends up in the ocean at some point. It doesn't pile up on its own anywhere unfortunately. I am going to try to see if someone is still cutting headstones here. I doubt anyone is though. About 90% of the headstones are painted cement blocks. We do have a quarry here. They bust up one of the hillsides to collect stone and sand materials for cement making.
Basalt is extremely hard rock, it erodes very slowly and and since dust will just blow in the wind you wont find it accumulated just laying around. Source: there is a lot of basalt in my country, mostly you will see it in the form of sharp rocks.