Would this be a good mix?

Add the things you "want to add" and lose the GO bottles. After mixing all, allow the mix to sit for 3-4 weeks to nutrient cycle after wetting thoroughly.

Those bottles suck (unnecessary).

J

Edit: switch blood and bone to fish bone and alfalfa. No Miracle Grow.

Good luck - and patience.

 

Doing a grow with Patio Plus/coir now and is a very good medium. Check the grow in my signature link...
Amendments are fish bone meal, fish meal, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, and bat guano.
Forget the GO, you won't need it....
I would add some ewc to your homemade compost @ 50/50.....

 

If you don't cook it might burn the plant but, definitely is not cycled(broken down) in the soil enough to be useable for the plant to uptake...
Alfalfa and kelp are probably the most desired food source in organic growing. They should be a part of your soil...

I would blend a 1/2 cup to 1 cup each of Dr Earth grow and bloom fertilizer in your soil for diversity and the beneficial soil microbes and mycorrhizae it has...

Azomite is alright but, rock dust is better. Places that cut granite etc will have this for free or, very cheap. Nurseries and online are other places to find the mineral dust.

Crab meal is fine...

Never used great white shark and heard it's good. What you want is a inoculate that is pre dominant with the endo strain of mycorrhizae. BioAg Vam is one of the best and highly concentrated....
I would use this to sprinkle on the roots and put in the planting hole at time of transplant and as a drench when watering...

 

Ok - first, please remember that this takes a bit to grasp. It took me several years to un-learn most of what I had thought I learned over a bunch of years of gardening with bottled nutrients. I had to make myself forget the Stoner Science that is broadcasted amongst my friends, their friends, pothead magazines and the Internet. Theres too many morons out there preaching idiocy, and I was one of them. I might still be?

Number one, forget about learning how to grow cannabis. While I understand that this is the intent here, first and foremost you need to learn how to grow PLANTS. Luckily, cannabis falls into this category, but what you will learn in this forum is how to grow plants. Many plants. Any plants.

Back to basics. Plants need 4 things to grow: light, water, air and nutrition. We must cover all 4 bases here to grow vigorous, healthy, productive plants.

1. LIGHT - what are you using for light? While many use CFLs, fluorescents, these are very low end and simply do not produce much of anything. They can be used to clone and root cuttings, but as far as I'm concerned, that's about it. I highly suggest using at least a 400 watt HID light if you actually want to produce anything worthwhile. Plants NEED light - and LOTS of it.

2. WATER - yup, water. Not distilled, not some fancy filtration system; just water. While folks that live in the city do need to get rid of chlorine and/or chloramine, this is basically as simple as it gets to do. Fill a 5 gallon pail and leave it out overnight if your town uses chlorine. this will allow the chlorine to dissipate. Add a teaspoon or two of compost or worm castings if your town/city uses chloramine and leave it out overnight and you're done. You do not need a fancy Reverse Osmosis system and you do not need distilled water. You just need water. If you're on a private well, just use it out of the tap and you're golden.

3. AIR - you want air circulating in your grow space. Fresh air in, old air out. It's that simple. The heat from your light needs to be exhausted and you want fresh air coming in.

4. NUTRITION - probably the most in-depth item. Plants use many assorted elements to grow. In order for plants to take in nutrition, everything must be broken down into its elemental form in order to be used by your plants. In an organic garden, we rely on microbes, which for our purposes right now we will base as bacteria. These microbes break down the organic matter in our soil - all of it, into the elements it was made from. Where do these microbes/bacteria come from? They (essentially, and for the most part) come from our worm castings and compost. This is why it is SO important in an organic garden to utilize quality compost and/or worm castings. Without these two items in our soil, our organic matter, including the assorted amendments (kelp meal, alfalfa, neem cake, et al) would not break down into its elemental form, and our plants would be malnourished.

Ok, we have established that in order to "eat", our soil organic matter must break down, and in order to ensure that we have the microbes to perform this task ( which is called nutrient cycling) we need to add good quality worm castings and/or compost. This is the essence of an organic garden. Now we need to add actual nutrition to our soil, so that the bacteria can break it down into usable plant food, and so we add a variety of soil AMENDMENTS. We want a variety of elements and organic compounds in our soil, so we add items such as kelp meal, alfalfa meal, neem cake, fish bone meal and whatever else we figure we need. The bacteria breaks these items down and our plants get to eat.

In an organic garden, we do not need to add different amendments for veg growth or for flowering stages. We add the amendments, and as they break down into a wide variety of elements and organic compounds, both the microbes and the plant decides what it needs and when it needs it. A simple item like kelp meal provides "complete mineralization" - which means it has everything, yes - everything in it (once broken down/nutrient cycled) to feed your plants from start to finish - healthy and vigorous. By adding 4 or 5 different soil amendments we can be completely assured, as long as we have solid microbial activity, and cover all of our other bases that our plants will thrive and be healthy. With a well constructed soil, we essentially only need to keep it moist throughout the grow with water and the plant and microbes will take care of everything else. You will NOT need "bloom boosters", nor will you need to feed your plants anything different during your vegetative cycle than you will during your flowering cycle. Remember - your plants and the microbes will take care of all of this for you.

Construct a healthy, living soil with the proper nutrition already mixed in, with a healthy microbe population and everything will fall into place. I highly suggest reading this thread through from the beginning - http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/1116550-easy-organic-soil-mix-beginners.html and following its direction, vs. trying to get necessary answers in several questions and answers here.

You now have the basics of HOW an organic garden works - now read and construct a healthy living soil and you'll never dream of gardening with bottles or any other way ever again.

Jerry.

 

Perlite - yes. I use buckwheat hulls, some use rice hulls. Use what is convenient for you.

Lime - I don't generally use it myself. A solid humus source will balance and stabilize pH for you - thus the need for a quality humus source. I also use ProMix for my peat source, which is already charged with a tad of lime. I also have oyster shell meal in my mix, which buffers pH.

HTH

J

 

I always liked Casadaga. I reckon you know that's a real place on the map eh Susan ?

A very ahhhh, ummmm, "spiritual place" one might intone.

G'Day!

 

Soak kelp meal instead of that product instead - a host of greater benefits over liquid seaweed extract and a tenth of the price - but mostly greater benefits.

Trust me - you do not need General Hydroponics/Organics (whatever) products in your organic garden.

Molasses can be used in an aerated compost tea to feed bacteria during the brew but I personally see no use for it otherwise. You should have more than enuff food in your soil mix. Let them eat that instead.

J

 

It really doesn't get better said than this.

 

If you want fish poo get some that is hydroslate(cold processed) and a seaweed concentrate...And yes they are not the same but some liquid concentrates have both like Neptune Harvest.
That bio marine is a new product and really think is best to use with their other GO product line....

The whole idea is to get off the bottles and let the soil do it's job like mother nature intended and do a water only grow with an occasional aact, top dressing or, nutrient teas...

 

The whole idea is to get off the bottles and let the soil do it's job like mother nature intended and do a water only grow with an occasional aact, top dressing or, nutrient teas...

^^^word.

J

 

Those are not so good.... Might help hanging them on the GR wall to get light to the bottom of the plants....You would be better off using cfl's or, T5 fluorescent.

CFL's are much better than the lights you are showing. Those lights have way less than 1 watt per diode and the penetration is poor. Most better led's are 3 watts and 5 watt diodes.

If your looking to grow nice large, tight buds go with hid lighting. Your probably going to need a exhaust system to remove heat....You need an exhaust/ventilation system anyway to exchange air in the GR , just a little better with hid lighting to remove the heat.

Led's are the newest on the market, a little expensive and not a lot of info on them, Even from the mfg...Led.s will definatley keep the heat down and save you money on the power bill but, there is always a trade off...
I would want a led light made in America from a mfg that is going to be around to listen to you and has a quality product...

Blackstar(Gotham Hydroponics) and California Lighting are two mfg. I know are American made and quality made. The Chinese made are cheaper but, support is lacking in every direction.

I tried 2 240 watt lights with the china made and had a terrible time with slow growth and other things. I went to a Blackstar and had much better light. I was still not happy with the plants and went back to hid. A new air cooled 600 watt did the trick...

I have no idea what your GR is like and watt your shooting for but, get some cfl's and give it a whirl and decide if this is what you want, then invest in a future grow with better lighting. You can always use cfl's for starting seeds/cloning and just supplemental lighting where you need it,

Rule of thumb...100 actual watts for 1 plant and an additional 50 watts for every plant thereafter. More..more..more is always better.
CFL's for vegging should be 6500K spectrum and for flowering 2700K. CFL's need to be 2-4" from the plant for good results. Not uncommon for growers to surround the plant with lights but, their affordable and put out little heat....

 

If your looking to grow nice large, tight buds go with hid lighting

Right on.

J

 

CassaDagA, here is the deal with lighting: A photon is a photon is a photon. Light, regardless of the source, is a physical property - it's a photon. Lumens, aka 'luminosity' is a measurement of light brightness. Terminology developed basically for human understanding. But of course you already know that so let's talk LED's.

Watt's is what determines the number of photons with LED's. The wattage power of the individual LED, which is wired in series in some standardized "wattage configuration". The inverse square law for "light" applies equally to HID, LED, flashlights, matches, butane lighters etc. Light is light from a physical property perspective. Light is comprised of photons.

When choosing an LED light source for supplemental or primary growing WATTS per LED is the key technical specification you want to look for. As I personally predicted, ahem, in this Great City, Moore's Law governing technology developement in LED lighting would occur over time. And volia! two years later since the advent of 1W LED light panels the consumer nows has choices ranging up to 4W per LED light. More watts per LED, more photons, more "light".

So, no matter what LED panel you are looking to purchase the THREE key things you should consider are (and there are actually many, many things to consider):

One, how many WATTS does each LED produce.

Two, what is the spectral wavelength produced by each LED and how many of each type are in the LED array.

Three, is the LED array serviceable such that you can replace LED's if one is found to be faulty thereby protecting your long term investment. LED's generally last 5-7 years for quality products but can be much shorter for cheap, imiatation, flashlight quality LED's.

The caveat with LED lighting these days is you're pretty much going to get what you pay for. Emptor! If it sounds too good to be true then it in all likelihood is. Usually an additional $50-$100 above what the "best price" on an LED array will cost you will put you in first class for the same type product. IOW, "you get what you pay for".

NASA has led the charge for over 20 years trying to grow plants successfully in SPACE! Can you imagine the trials we have to overcome here on terra firma that must pale in comparison to trying to grow alfalfa sprouts in space? Pretty daunting and we're not even talking about a flowering plant in space per se.

The point being is "LED's" are not the pancea a lot of folks are hoping for with LED's replacing HID's, at least not yet. Will a cheap one work? Sure! So will half a dozen CFL bulbs. But the Moore's Law band continues playing and it won't be long before what costs you $600 today for a 300W, (300 one WATT LED's), will cost you $400 in 6 more months. Just a footnote it wasn't but about 12-15 months ago a 300W 300 LED system cost a whooping $1500!

Now, I recount all of this from memory which is 6-9 months past when I started reading about them. The absolute best places to look for scientific data supporting LED's replacing HID's for growing plants is: NASA, Quantum, Kesil, and university studies which have determined emperically that under ideal and closely control environments LED lighting systems will match or exceed that of HID's lighting systems at approximately 50% less energy costs, and about 50% less total costs (overhead, AC, Heating, etc,) than that of HID's. But it is not cheap and the buy in for commercial interests for choosing LED's over HID's is the longer term payout through less energy consumption and theoretically less maintenance.

More information that you or anyone else probably wanted to know but that's my opine. Now, I reckon I better go start digging into current LED technology to see if the rascals have yet developed the 4w and 6w standard LED bulb. With those, then we're getting somewhere with replacing HID's in the small footprint growroom most of us share similarities with and are our biggest concern - heat and total energy cost.

LED's work but spend your money wisely. That's really the bottom line. In seven words.