Recycled Organic Living Soil (ROLS) and No Till Thread

[weedstoner420]

Thanks, this would mean it wouldnt kill my beneficial bacteria like normal fertilizer can do?

I don't think so, as long as you don't use too much. Like I said, many organic fertilizer blends do contain potassium sulfate, I don't think it would make sense to add if it could harm the soil biology.

I'm not sure how regular synthetic fertilizers could harm soil bacteria, either, unless you added too much of them. They might not help things, but I don't see why they would necessarily have a negative effect

 

[Rozgreenburn]

First and foremost, is that they continue to build up in your medium. That is the main reason why folks don't reuse the medium when using synthetic nutrients.

 

[Geert]

First and foremost, is that they continue to build up in your medium. That is the main reason why folks don't reuse the medium when using synthetic nutrients.

Ok, now is
weedstoner420 said:
Potassium sulfate (K2SO4) synthetic?.

 

[weedstoner420]

Ok, now is
weedstoner420 said:
Potassium sulfate (K2SO4) synthetic?.

Here's an article which should shed some light on the matter: https://www.easy-grow.co.uk/is-potassium-sulfate-organic/

From the article:

Not all potassium-sulfate fertilizers are alike. Synthetic potassium sulfate is not OMRI approved, nor is any potassium-sulfate fertilizer produced by acidulation or chemical reaction. To be organically certified, potassium sulfate must come from natural, mined sources with little or no processing. Unfortunately, some unprocessed raw materials are barely water soluble, or are loaded with unwanted minerals. Only a few sources of organic potassium sulfate meet the requirements of purity, water solubility and low-chloride content desirable in a garden fertilizer. If in doubt, ask for more details. Well-informed sales staff should know about the source of their fertilizers, whether the product has an OMRI label on it or not!

 

[Geert]

Thanks for helping me,
i think im using alfalfa pellets.
I can get them cheap, they supply me with around
4-1-4 so i could balance them out with high P guano.

 

[stoobeey]

Just looking for any suggestions on if I should add anything else to my amendment list

My base is pest/chunky perlite/buus compost/ewc

All down to earth brand
Alfalfa meal
Kelp meal
Neem seed meal
Crab meal
Kelp meal
Fish bone meal
Gypsum
Azomite
Dolomite
Green sand (only added to initial cook I read takes ages to break all down didn't think I needed to reamend)
Langbeinite (sparingly)
Humic acid (but I've been out and last round didn't get any reamend)
Bokashi grain

 

[Mohican]

Epsom

 

[2cent]

Epsom

Only as foilar and dolo swap for lime or your mg wil be crazy
you use langbenite that’s mass mg
dolo will crush the soil compaction you only use that if soils test says to and even then the mg ratio is waaaay out to ca

limestone is what should be used not dolo
langbenite is the only mg source that should be used if used

 

[bobrown14]

I don't think so, as long as you don't use too much. Like I said, many organic fertilizer blends do contain potassium sulfate, I don't think it would make sense to add if it could harm the soil biology.

I'm not sure how regular synthetic fertilizers could harm soil bacteria, either, unless you added too much of them. They might not help things, but I don't see why they would necessarily have a negative effect

Negative affect from synthetic fertilizers are many.

Since the plant is being "fed" nutrients from your hand the plant wont go thru the process of root exudate creating the symbiotic environment that bacteria and fungi thrive in. So the bacteria fungi don't get fed and they die off. So the soil is also void of micro-organisms. This actually depletes the soil of nutrients because there are much less micro-organisms going thru their cycle.

Potash = many forms for organic inputs.

Best 1 in hardwood ash and kelp meal.

Also Muriate of potash, or potassium chloride, and sulfate of potash, or potassium sulfate - I don't use these you need to go real easy and they are long term amendments and not recommended by me for container gardening.

I use kelp meal... wood ash goes in the compost bin and on the soil outside in the veggie patch.

Concentrate on a good compost source you wont need to worry about deficiencies. Kelp meal is a go to for me.

 

[weedstoner420]

Negative affect from synthetic fertilizers are many.

Since the plant is being "fed" nutrients from your hand the plant wont go thru the process of root exudate creating the symbiotic environment that bacteria and fungi thrive in. So the bacteria fungi don't get fed and they die off. So the soil is also void of micro-organisms. This actually depletes the soil of nutrients because there are much less micro-organisms going thru their cycle.

Potash = many forms for organic inputs.

Best 1 in hardwood ash and kelp meal.

Also Muriate of potash, or potassium chloride, and sulfate of potash, or potassium sulfate - I don't use these you need to go real easy and they are long term amendments and not recommended by me for container gardening.

I use kelp meal... wood ash goes in the compost bin and on the soil outside in the veggie patch.

Concentrate on a good compost source you wont need to worry about deficiencies. Kelp meal is a go to for me.

Okay so having nutrients readily available in a synthetic nutrient solution causes the plant to produce fewer exudates to attract microbes. That doesn't imply that the synthetic fertilizers are necessarily harming the microbes, it means the plant is producing fewer exudates to attract them, so they leave on their own. The plant will still grow if given sufficient nutrients, regardless of where they come from, and the microbial population may diminish, but I doubt they'll ever leave altogether unless you completely sterilize the medium. In fact, some of them may even feed on the synthetic nutrients you're putting in there.

Kelp meal can be really high in sodium. I actually tested my soil mix after using kelp meal for a grow or two, and it tested quite high in sodium. So I stopped using the kelp and instead switched to Espoma products, which contain potassium sulfate and not kelp meal.

I bet if I used compost from the compost pile in our backyard, which contains tons of broken down banana peels, my plants would have sufficient potassium (and many other nutrients) just from that. But every time I've used that in the indoor garden, some spider mites or mealybugs other pests come in with it. So I stick with store-bought stuff out of an abundance of caution. It's just what works in my situation.

 

[bobrown14]

@weedstoner420 Kelp meal when processed gets rinsed off (salts removed) and dried then cut up.

There's no salt in processed kelp meal. If there was my plants would never live. I'm in the same soil (Coots mix) since 2015. I re-use the same soil over and over and amend between grows 1 cup kelp meal to 1 cubic foot of soil. That would be 2x a grow. 1st time at up-can from seed/cut into veg then again when I up-can into flower.

So for each cubic foot of soil per year I amend ~8-10 cups of kelp meal along with a few tbs of Gypsum and the same amount of malted barley ground fine.

I'm doing fine - plants are growing into the lights as usual. Weed is top shelf.

The thing about bacteria and fungi and plants roots and the rhizosphere is very complex. Its a symbiotic relationship that is making the soil come alive. I look at growing and farming as I'm growing soil, the plants come and go but the soil and bacteria/fungi stay alive.

Here's a very good write up on it from John Kemph about James White’s work on the rhizophagy cycle.

Rhizophagy cycle = is the idea that plants are getting their nutrition from living bacteria.

Check out James White and his work on this topic. It's eye opening from an organic farmer perspective.

https://www.ecofarmingdaily.com/nutrient-management-for-market-farms/?utm_source=Acres+U.S.A.+Community&utm_campaign=42befb8def-ACRES-4-3-22_nutrient-management-market-farms&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-42befb8def-[LIST_EMAIL_ID]&goal=0_65283346c2-42befb8def-184714445&mc_cid=42befb8def&mc_eid=a42e609adc

 

[weedstoner420]

@weedstoner420 Kelp meal when processed gets rinsed off (salts removed) and dried then cut up.

There's no salt in processed kelp meal. If there was my plants would never live. I'm in the same soil (Coots mix) since 2015. I re-use the same soil over and over and amend between grows 1 cup kelp meal to 1 cubic foot of soil. That would be 2x a grow. 1st time at up-can from seed/cut into veg then again when I up-can into flower.

So for each cubic foot of soil per year I amend ~8-10 cups of kelp meal along with a few tbs of Gypsum and the same amount of malted barley ground fine.

I'm doing fine - plants are growing into the lights as usual. Weed is top shelf.

The thing about bacteria and fungi and plants roots and the rhizosphere is very complex. Its a symbiotic relationship that is making the soil come alive. I look at growing and farming as I'm growing soil, the plants come and go but the soil and bacteria/fungi stay alive.

Here's a very good write up on it from John Kemph about James White’s work on the rhizophagy cycle.

Rhizophagy cycle = is the idea that plants are getting their nutrition from living bacteria.

Check out James White and his work on this topic. It's eye opening from an organic farmer perspective.

https://www.ecofarmingdaily.com/nutrient-management-for-market-farms/?utm_source=Acres+U.S.A.+Community&utm_campaign=42befb8def-ACRES-4-3-22_nutrient-management-market-farms&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-42befb8def-[LIST_EMAIL_ID]&goal=0_65283346c2-42befb8def-184714445&mc_cid=42befb8def&mc_eid=a42e609adc

I'm glad you're having good luck with the kelp meal. My plants now get Tomato Tone instead and seem to be doing alright as well. Sorry if I came off as anti-kelp, obviously it's a fine soil amendment that people have been successfully using for hundreds if not thousands of years.

I'll have to check out that James White guy. Most of my knowledge on this subject comes from Jeff Lowenfels' books, and his most recent one (which I haven't read yet) is about the rhizophagy cycle. That really seems like the cutting edge of soil food web science, or at least something that is only recently being taken seriously. It's crazy how much our knowledge in this area has grown in just the past few decades. Thanks for the link!

 

[bobrown14]

I'm glad you're having good luck with the kelp meal. My plants now get Tomato Tone instead and seem to be doing alright as well. Sorry if I came off as anti-kelp, obviously it's a fine soil amendment that people have been successfully using for hundreds if not thousands of years.

I'll have to check out that James White guy. Most of my knowledge on this subject comes from Jeff Lowenfels' books, and his most recent one (which I haven't read yet) is about the rhizophagy cycle. That really seems like the cutting edge of soil food web science, or at least something that is only recently being taken seriously. It's crazy how much our knowledge in this area has grown in just the past few decades. Thanks for the link!

James White is the soil scientist that did a lot of work on it. He's got a team at Rutgers U that are doing the hard work and he's doing a lot of writing about it. Pretty cool stuff - this is cutting edge last 5 years research.

I'm into no or low till farming/gardening and its catching on with our local farmers. The food they grow is what we eat.

If the plants are grown in crappy soil with low nutrition and the farmer needs to use fertilizer, where does the nutrients come from if its not in the soil?? If its not in the soil it wont be in the plants the animals and humans consume. Fertilizers made synthetically lack most of the nutrients we need to be healthy.

The farmers figured that out when the cows got sick over time eating forage grown with fertilizers.

Then they figured out how to amend the feed with minerals - most of those minerals we use in our soil mix like Coots mix for example.

The next step is to stop using synthetic fertilizers and start using no-till methods and growing forage with a mix of seed stock so that the soil is being rejuvenated by plants roots and bacteria. Its all about the bacteria, they break minerals down for the plants to uptake. Now the farmer doesn't need to amend the hay with minerals - they are already in the plant material and he doesn't have to buy fertilizers. Win win healthy plants, healthy people.

Works the same with cannabis/hemp/veggies etc.

I'd be willing to bet our societal issue with obesity/chronic diereses can be directly associated with the introduction and use of synthetic fertilizers and weed killers (glyphosate) into our food chain.

 

[Trey_Green]

Started a vermiculture bin with some bait worms, threw in my spent sphagnum soil from previous indoor grows. Chucked in some nearly rotten food, which I buried. Added enough water that it'll stay wet in the darkness. Punched holes in the lid, covered holes with porous tape to keep out the black flies. Now I'm just waiting a couple months. What should I expect, if things go well?

 

[headtreep]

How is everyone doing!?

 

[SCJedi]

Started a vermiculture bin with some bait worms, threw in my spent sphagnum soil from previous indoor grows. Chucked in some nearly rotten food, which I buried. Added enough water that it'll stay wet in the darkness. Punched holes in the lid, covered holes with porous tape to keep out the black flies. Now I'm just waiting a couple months. What should I expect, if things go well?

Poke holes in the sides and a few in low spots of the bottom so it can drain, if needed. No need to drown worms. Top it off with a layer of shredded newspaper or a sheet of cardboard. That will keep it from drying out and the worms will just eat it anyway. You can expect some fine worm casting in no time and all. When you feed alternate sides/corners and don't overfeed them

 

[Chronikool]

How is everyone doing!?

Hey bud...good to see ya about!

Congratz on the 10 year old thread!

 

[Hollatchaboy]

Started a vermiculture bin with some bait worms, threw in my spent sphagnum soil from previous indoor grows. Chucked in some nearly rotten food, which I buried. Added enough water that it'll stay wet in the darkness. Punched holes in the lid, covered holes with porous tape to keep out the black flies. Now I'm just waiting a couple months. What should I expect, if things go well?

Your worms may not compost as efficiently as red wigglers.

 

[ndogg]

Thanks @headtreep, Congrats on the 10 yr. thread!
Here's the results!

 

[weedly1]

Epsom

how much per gallon(4.5 liters) soil?
I do have other things added myself in my recycled organic semi soil ,
can you review list as it has been sitting 3 weeks now
watering it?
I have some red clover as a cover crop before switch from one gallon to 7 gallon. Seems to grow that or at least allow it to grow but I think I might have made it to hot so question is will clover grow if soil is to hot to flower with?
thanks