People say whenever you plant directly into the ground, you should prepare the soil/dirt first, but why? What's the big deal if you just stick your germinated seed directly into the outdoor dirt without doing anything else to the surrounding dirt? Won't it still flourish?
And those are just a few of the many problems you will encounter if you do it like that.... Technically, yes, you can do it this way, but is an absolutely horrible idea. You will NEVER seen an experienced professional gardener growing like that. Plus just look at commercial agriculture - you really think that if none of this stuff made a difference that all farmers everywhere would be doing it? The reason that farmers prep their soil is because it works - and there is about 10,000 years worth of evidence to support this. Soil prep makes a HUGE difference in how well the plant will do. The texture, drainage and nutrients in the soil affect how quickly the plant will grow, how big it will get and how healthy it will be. I've seen someone try to grow with the same idea - they were convinced that nutrients and soil prep made no difference. At the end of the year they got about 3% the yield that I got off the same clones. Don't skimp on digging and preping your holes and don't put seedling out too early - you will regret it if you do.
honestly imo depending how the ground soil is were ever your growing its does not matter, I have grown plants bigger than some of my friends who have prepped their soil.. For one the plant dont need nutrients for a while & for two seeds can germinate vary well depending on the ground soil.. Honestly imo it dont matter, its up too you.. I would prep the soil, but then again half the plants I have grown were from just throwing seeds in the yard not even pushing them down, then nurturing them to buds & I have had some vary bigs ones on these so called accidental plants lol.. after the plant takes off it will grow huge if done right but imo there about the same, there is a slight to almost no difference imo..
Quick questoin how does prepping a hole keep Bacteria, mold, insects(specially insects) parasites from reaching your plants? Damn so negitive, first off lets look at commercial agriculture, your average commercial farmer. He does not prep is soil by amending it, like you are suggesting. IT is not fiscally possible. Good agricultural land wants between 5%-10% organic matter, which equates to about 4 cubic feet per 1000 square feet, one acre is 43,560. So you would need 174.24 cubic feet or 116.16 bags of fox farm soil at $13 equals $1,510.08. an acre. You think a farmer is going to buy a piece of land look at and say " I need to go out there and add several metric tons of organic matter." No, hes going to look at it and say " this is what i got now, I will work with and improve it in the future." So, maybe commercial farming is not the example you want to use here. Commercial farmer use what is called soil management practices, which are very different than what you are trying to infer. It is very true how ever that texture, drainage, nutrients play a very important roll in plant growth. You are assuming he is planting in terrible soil. What if he's planting in fertile loam soil or is near a alluvial deposit? Drainage will change with the vary act of digging. Nutrients as we all know dont have to go into the hole first, they come in a convenient little bottle with instructions on how to apply it properly. Did you know nitrogen is the leading pollutant on the plant earth. All bodies of water are contaminated with it, so is the air, and the ground. Can you guess who cause's most of that pollution? That's right home owners, who over apply fertilizers. Last, but not least the 10,000 years commit. So, historically farming hasn't changed much in the last 10,000 years. If you brought a farmer from the time antiquity, to 1940 he would under in premise what the farmer was doing. Take that same farmer to the year 2000, and show him someone farming he would not understand what they were doing. Trackers that are driven with GPS, automatic transplantor's, water that is injected with nutrients, flying crop dusting with insectides and fertilizers. Things have changed so drastically, he wouldn't even know, the current farmer was tending to the plants. I would agreed that it all depends on native soil. If you have naturally fertile soil you don't need to add or do anything. If your soil is bad however not amending it WILL, do poorly. Keep'em burnin DirtyViperMan
2 cents.....dirty vipe has got a great point.....i worked on a farm and here is how we prepared to plant a field......we plowed it with a chisel plow, (very fun to do) we leveled it with a leveler (i got high) and everyday after barn cleaning wed go spread manure over it....... my advice is to dig and clean the hole ur gonna plant....get the bigger rocks out roots of trees grasses weeds or shrubs and also clesan up around the hole a few inches all around so weeds and shit dont creep up on seedling....there is some prep of a planting site....if ur soil is good great... other wise a couple bags of top soil aint gonna break ya and will help in the long run..... and diggin a hole or prepping one will not keep ne thing singled cell or more away......
What vipe said. Yes you can plant in the right native soil. I could in mine but I will dig a hole to loosen up the soil to let the roots grow easier. And since I'm already digging a hole I'm gonna add some extra back dirt to the dark sandy loam that my native soil is. You can't just dig six inches and transplant your seedling. You need to loosen that dirt up. Thats why farmers plow and disc their fields to loosen the soil to get oxygen in there to help new growth. They will normally add some straight 10-10-10 or something like that to give the soil some extra nutes and disc that in. They also have to make sure that the ph is good too. They are basically doing the same thing we are with our "holes" without adding or subtracting the actual soil. It takes them a couple years to get that soil just the way they like it. They usually plant something that grows easy the first couple years and and from tilling in waste from the crop that breaks down a gives nutrients to the soil. But we dont want to wait a couple years for the "perfect" soil so its just easier sometimes to just add a little dirt or whatever to help ourselves out.
dig holes in the local soil ..treat them all with dolomite..treat your whole area with dolomite..then bring in your soil mix when you are ready to do the final transplant..you can also treat your area with powder repellents be careful about getting those chemicals in your soil...use organic deterrents on your plant
Are you for real? All I can says is WOW. Yes, farmers do amend soil - in fact the vast majority of them do it in some for or another. Not replenishing the organic material in your soil eventually causes the soil to become severely degraded over time. Also, no farmer would be using fox farm - that is idiotic. Farmers (and most smart larger scale growers for that matter) use bulk ag products which cost a small percentage of what buying small bags of something like fox farm do. A cubic yard of vineyard-grade compost can be purchased here in NorCal for only $30, which means it costs slightly more than $1 per cubic foot. By your own calculations of using 174.24 cubic feet per acre this means it costs only $193.33 per acre for the needed organic materials, NOT $1,500+ per acre. Amending soil is one of the most basic principles of agriculture and soil science. To say that is not possible or that it does not make a difference is like saying that you can grow without water or without sunlight - which is of course totally ridiculous just like your statement is. A farmer who has not clue to what he is doing or a total novice might do that. Do you really think that is how commercial agriculture works? Soil testing and amending before planting crops is a corner-stone in commercial agriculture practices - it is very rare that farm land is perfectly balanced and fertile enough to sustain years of farming with no inputs. Even if you find the "perfect" soil you cannot just keep growing in it year after year without amending it - eventually you will literally run out of soil. The basic concept of using amendments in soil has not changed in 10,000 years. It is a time proven technique. You obviously completely missed the point of my statement (among other things) Not amending you soil before going to the trouble to grow cannabis is so mind boggling stupid and counter-productive I can barely even comprehend it. How could you even give someone advice that bad? I mean sure, technically you can grow like you are talking about, but those are going to be some sad pathetic little plants compared to what they could have been. If Lemme was lucky enough to find a nice loamy deposit, then good for him, he won't have to do much to it. With as much fertilizer as cannabis uses however you will still need to apply more to maximize it's potential. Oh, and the main source of N pollution is not home gardeners - that is asinine. The main source is commercial agriculture and it's excessive use of mineral salts (like N.)