Wolverine mix

Here is the soil mix I made up on May 5, 2011 and first used on Oct 1, 2011.

3 cf of premier mix from home depot, it is a straight peat with no additives and costs $9 a 3 cf bale
1 cf of homemade thermo compost (hot and fresh) (20% or so is used soil)
.5 cf of homemade ewc from a small tote worm bin
2, .5 cf bags of lava rock, again from home depot and both were around $5 (total)
a small left over bag of large chunk perlite, .25cf?

Fertilizers (when calculating amounts I consider the compost as already treated, or hot, so together this is what I would call a very hot mix)
6 cups of espoma's bio tone starter plus
3 cups alfalfa meal
3 cups kelp meal
3 cups crab meal
bonemeal is added when filling pots

Minerals
1 cup dolomite lime
2 cups of soft rock phosphate
1 cup azamite
.5 cups of sul po mag
1 cup gypsum
1 cup oyster shell

Filling pots
I use a handfull of bonemeal (1 cup?)in the bottom couple of inches in a 7 gallon fabric pot (my reasoning is bonemeal is not mobile in soils, so I put it deep in the root zone) I also added a 1/2 cup of a neem/karanja cake in a 50/50 mix, another 1/2 cup n/k gets top dressed in early flower. This was mixed and left a month or so before plants were added. Once plants were added, they got a top mulch of old fan leaves and cut up branches.

During the summer this mix was kept alive in a compost sak (100 gallon smart pot) I fed it left over compost teas, and kept it damp with water. At the start the PH was 5, at use, it was mid 6's. My secret PH ingredient was time, lol.

So far i'm in early flower. The plants were fed untill now with homemade FPE's of dandelions, both whole, and of flowers at the flip, and whole plant dandelion FPE in veg. I also have started to experiment with adding powdered nettles, yarrow, comfrey, spirulina, in simple bubble a few hours teas. When using these teas I might add either powdered aloe vera, or yucca root, added too early and it foams like crazy, and this bubbling is just to mix it up well. All this has led to fast growth, and a big stretch. Too early to say how flowering will go, but i have great hopes!

There are four plants here the two on the left front and back are white siberians and two weeks behind the plants on the right, front right Jack Herer, right back bubba kush. Pic was taken on the flip day.



At ten days in flower

 

For anyone interested, I got all four clones from friends. I have never grown any of these varieties up to now. Although i asked the friends to start the clones at a certain date, one did, one did not. I did not particularly want the white siberians, but my friend's other cuts were not rooted, and time was running short, oh well. All four clones had spider mites...stoners lol

It always seems like whatever I grow, the plants always look alike. Could the enviroment be as important as genetics? MIW

 

This was an experiment Jerry, it's still not done. i wanted to push the limits, and I think i did, but still give nutrient cycling a chance to do it's thing. More nutrients plus more time = who knows? Plus I take time off from growing each fall anyway. The buried bonemeal, is another experiment. I've done that for 3 flower cycles, and all three have been great, but at the same time I have been using my thermo compost for 3 cycles too, so the bonemeal is probably just incidental, i really can't say.......MIW

 

Thanks friend, your methods have provided most of the science, and have been inspirational. From this old coot to another old coot

 

I'm too fucking high to do your math, you need a mathmagicion, lol. Plus I really don't know anything about sub cool's recipe, or how it works or anything.

We need to standardize amounts, who measures in tsp or tbs? MIW

 

Man, good eye's Poppy, the first pic was with a MH and the second was just before lights came on, most all the light was camera flash. I just have a cheap point and shoot. They look better after the lights been on a while, but now that it has a HPS and it is hard to get a good pic to show the colors under the yellow light......MIW

 

This is my first go around using lava rock. And yes, it is big, and red, and i did not crush it. The soil mix already has some perlite that i threw in, plus there is old soil with perlite. So rather than add more of the same size chunks i went with large size lava rock. Without perlite i probably would have crushed at least some of it. Lava rock is about $5 for 1 cf, and it seems to work very well, it holds air in those little pockets, plus I've read an ideal mix has different sizes of aireation components. Everything else being close to the same, I am shaving at least a day off my waterings this grow, i went from watering every 3-4 days to watering every other day to every two days. I think the lava rock is the reason why. I have one pot with more rock and it goes through water even faster. I think because the rock is taking up more soil volume. I'll have to count them at harvest, but I think ideally I only need 6-8 per 7 gallon pot as long as i have smaller chunks of something else. Next time i go to the big city I'll try to get rice hulls for the next mix to add to the lava rock. But all in all so far i'm liking the lava rock.....MIW