Long time synthetic grower switching to organic grow, thoughts?

VILEPLUME

VILEPLUME

Well-Known Member
Richard Drysift said:
I water my plants from a dehumidifier sump. Probly would not even drink it unless I had to. Never ph anything. at all. ever. The ph is set by the activity of the microbes and composition of the soil. That’s why a mostly coco mix is so tricky to maintain proper absorption. If you use a bagged soil mix and add in active compost you shouldn’t need to worry about a ph imbalance no matter what your water ph is.
I have an unfair advantage over some because I have a worm bin. The key to growing without nutrients is compost; the more active is it the better. All I do is throw fresh EWC from the worm bin into the mix and that along with properly liming the soil after each run is enough to keep ph right where it should be. Mycorrhizae does the rest.
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Thanks for sharing.

So from clone to harvest you never top dress or add compost tea? The soil from day 1 has enough nutes until harvest?
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
VILEPLUME said:
Thanks for sharing.

So from clone to harvest you never top dress or add compost tea? The soil from day 1 has enough nutes until harvest?
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No but that’s because I fully amend the soil after each run. My mix has been recycled over and over for years now; it gets better with age. When starting out with a fresh bagged mix you will probably need to give teas regularly to maintain high levels of microbial activity. After several runs amending your mix you’ll notice it will sustain plants longer without much more than water. It takes a few recycles to reach supernatural status but you’ll know it when you get there.
I do top dress with EWC if needed but usually by the time they do they get transplanted to larger containers. I also add fertilizer to each pot: a handful or so of chicken manure which keeps them nice and green. For bloom phase I put 2 Jobes organic spikes into each pot just before flipping. Sprinkle on granular mycorrhizae in the hole at each transplant.
If all else fails I keep a bottle of Neptune’s harvest with seaweed on hand; usually in mid to late bloom or late in veg when they’ve been in the same pot too long they will need a boost of soluble NPK.
 
VILEPLUME

VILEPLUME

Well-Known Member
Richard Drysift said:
No but that’s because I fully amend the soil after each run. My mix has been recycled over and over for years now; it gets better with age. When starting out with a fresh bagged mix you will probably need to give teas regularly to maintain high levels of microbial activity. After several runs amending your mix you’ll notice it will sustain plants longer without much more than water. It takes a few recycles to reach supernatural status but you’ll know it when you get there.
I do top dress with EWC if needed but usually by the time they do they get transplanted to larger containers. I also add fertilizer to each pot: a handful or so of chicken manure which keeps them nice and green. For bloom phase I put 2 Jobes organic spikes into each pot just before flipping. Sprinkle on granular mycorrhizae in the hole at each transplant.
If all else fails I keep a bottle of Neptune’s harvest with seaweed on hand; usually in mid to late bloom or late in veg when they’ve been in the same pot too long they will need a boost of soluble NPK.
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To clarify, you save the root ball in the end and recycle some of the soil that has the good microbes?
 
VILEPLUME

VILEPLUME

Well-Known Member
FRICKITYFRICKTYFRESH said:
No offence to anyone, but i dont understand why people try to make this shit so difficult. Subcool literally left all his forums and recipes on this site for everyone to read. Make a half or even quarter amount of his supersoil recipe and your guaranteed to grow some stinky organic dank.
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None taken. Do you have the specific links?
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
VILEPLUME said:
To clarify, you save the root ball in the end and recycle some of the soil that has the good microbes?
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After each run I toss the root ball into a tote bin and then add in fresh EWC along with whatever amendments/minerals I have on hand and then let it set for a month. Some of the microbes will survive in the root ball but adding in more compost replenishes their numbers. Lots of ways to do this but my discipline is TLO; a no till grower might plug another plant into the pot and just top dress for another run.
 
ganga gurl420

ganga gurl420

Well-Known Member
Richard Drysift said:
I water my plants from a dehumidifier sump. Probly would not even drink it unless I had to. Never ph anything. at all. ever. The ph is set by the activity of the microbes and composition of the soil. That’s why a mostly coco mix is so tricky to maintain proper absorption. If you use a bagged soil mix and add in active compost you shouldn’t need to worry about a ph imbalance no matter what your water ph is.
I have an unfair advantage over some because I have a worm bin. The key to growing without nutrients is compost; the more active is it the better. All I do is throw fresh EWC from the worm bin into the mix and that along with properly liming the soil after each run is enough to keep ph right where it should be. Mycorrhizae does the rest.
Click to expand...
Preach!
This is why I always say organics is such a loose term used by too many without the understanding of what it really is. There is absolutely nothing in this world that compares to a living soil! It is the rock star of organics!
P.s. I'm actually going to start a worm bin and im thrilled about it!
 
S

Sup Im BirDy

Well-Known Member
Try out some megacrop its effective and pretty straight forward. Some earthworm castings. I did my own version of the Subcool super soil which I thought worked amazing. IMO organic smells and tastes better, and the buds were super frosty.
 
PatientGuddanStownd

PatientGuddanStownd

Well-Known Member
Sub's recipe is good. I tweaked it slightly for my first organic grow. I did mix at 1/4 volume--which is plenty for my entire year. Don't mess with lowering strength, the plant will only use what it needs anyway so don't short your babies any of those sweet sweet amendments!

It is a hot soil, but mixed correctly into a quality organic base soil, I have not seen any real issues.

For a 5 gallon planter, do just like sub said--bottom 4ish inches super soil, 1ish inch base soil/super soil mix, fill the rest up with quality base soil. (I use nectar).
 
ganga gurl420

ganga gurl420

Well-Known Member
I've seen too many people burn their plants from using subs recipe.

Personally I find just buying a premixed bag of nutes is way more efficient and cost effective, and it doesn't matter really what brand you use. I am a huge fan of the espoma company in itself so that is why I use their product as a main base and top dress with something else but I don't have to worry about mixing too much of this or that. Plus the products I use is already inoculated with a ton of bennies. Its nice not having a million half partially used bags of different dry amendments laying around like some of my friends do.

Just my 2 cents.
 
FRICKITYFRICKTYFRESH

FRICKITYFRICKTYFRESH

Well-Known Member
ganga gurl420 said:
I've seen too many people burn their plants from using subs recipe.

Personally I find just buying a premixed bag of nutes is way more efficient and cost effective, and it doesn't matter really what brand you use. I am a huge fan of the espoma company in itself so that is why I use their product as a main base and top dress with something else but I don't have to worry about mixing too much of this or that. Plus the products I use is already inoculated with a ton of bennies. Its nice not having a million half partially used bags of different dry amendments laying around like some of my friends do.

Just my 2 cents.
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This last grow I used nothing but a mix of fox farms soil and Earth Dust dry amendments and having amazing results. My plants might not grow as fast or yield as much, but when it comes to growing your own medicine, and investing so much personal time, quality should always be #1 on everyones list.
 
Olive Drab Green

Olive Drab Green

Well-Known Member
VILEPLUME said:
I have some 1-month-old clones that are in small pots that I want to transplant into new pots. They were grown with synthetic nutes, but I'd like to try them with organic nutes for veg and bloom.

I'll be using 80% coco 20% hp promix. Then mixing in the recommend per litre or soil gia green 4-4-4, worm casings, dry molasses and dried sea kelp. De-chlorinate tap water with a water stone for 24hr. PH water to 6.6-6.8 so the good bacteria in the soil doesn't die using baking soda to raise or white vinegar to lower PH.

After 3 weeks switch to bloom cycle and top dress with 50% gia green 4-4-4 and 50% gia green 2-8-4, with micro nutes of dry molasses and dried sea kelp.

Top dress again after week 3 and week 6 with gia green 2-8-4, with micro nutes of dry molasses and dried sea kelp.

Up until week 9 just give water at PH 6.6-6.8.

Thoughts? My goal is to keep it as simple as possible without making compost teas unless there is an emergency deficiency.
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If you’re using organics properly, pH should be a nonissue since organics are self-buffering vs synthetic chelates.
 
ganga gurl420

ganga gurl420

Well-Known Member
Olive Drab Green said:
I also highly recommend getting something like Roots Organics Dry Nutrients Player Pack. Literally the best organic nutrients I have ever used.
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I use their uprising bloom for my top dressing. I used to use fox farm happy frog bulb food but the specific one I used they stopped making. It was a 3-8-8. However after months of searching for a replacement I really love the ingredient list of the roots organics!
 
Y

youraveragehorticulturist

Well-Known Member
I've been eye-balling the Roots Organic all in ones.

I saw the "Uprising" Grow and Bloom, and "Terp Tea" Grow and Bloom, at a glance it looked like both grows and both blooms(3-7-4) were pretty similar.

Then saw "Terp Tea" Bloom Booster (.5 - 6 - 18) It looked pretty solid for the 2nd half of flower.

Does anyone have any opinions of info on this stuff?

Edited to show .5-6-18, not smiley face.
 
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Olive Drab Green

Olive Drab Green

Well-Known Member
youraveragehorticulturist said:
I've been eye-balling the Roots Organic all in ones.

I saw the "Uprising" Grow and Bloom, and "Terp Tea" Grow and Bloom, at a glance it looked like both grows and both blooms(3-7-4) were pretty similar.

Then saw "Terp Tea" Bloom Booster (.5 - 6 - 18). It looked pretty solid for the 2nd half of flower.

Does anyone have any opinions of info on this stuff?
Click to expand...
I got a bag of both veg and bloom terp tea on top of both the Dry Nutrients Player Pack and the Liquid Master pack. I never got to use the teas because my entire life turned inside out and exploded, but I’m highly interested.
 
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