stuck with home depot and walmart.
- Thread starter Cyproz
- Start date
superdave5
Active Member
Do you live by any mountains or forest??? Try digging some fresh soil from the mountains or forest and dilluting your organic MG. Or try a nursery. You dont always need a grow shop to buy soil and you can always start your seedlings in a dixie cup with mountain soil and when there strong enough just transplant them. Mountain soils tend to be rich in fibers, even use bark and mix it in. This will help get break about the actual dirt and allow more air flow to your roots. I use biobizz soil and love it. But that comes from a grow shop or online distributor
KolorBlind
Well-Known Member
Yeah Home Depot should sell promix and sunshine mix soils. Just buy one of those and a bag of perlite. Whatever you do, do NOT use outdoor soil indoors unless you sterilize it first by baking it in the oven at 350 for 30min. I know so many people that just started their plants using outdoor soil, then transplanted them to a good soil mix, and every time they have bug problems.
I have never, ever had bugs in any soil Ive bought from Home Depot or and local hardware store, yet when a friend donated 3 Diesel Ryder autoflowering plants (2 female 1 male) to me a few weeks ago that had been planted in outdoor soil they had gnats allover them. I have treated a few times and have fly strips hanging up but now all 19 of my plants have gnats in the soil, YAY! At least its not spider mites or something that actually eats the foliage, but gnats still eat the nutrients in the soil & their larvae eat the roots so I still need to get rid of them.
Just get something without nutes and avoid the word organic, it basically means that the soil will be more acidic than cannabis prefers. Make sure to mix it with perlite then just add nutes to your water. For veg, use Alaska Fish Fertilizer (5-1-1) and Superthrive, both can be found at walmart.
KB
I have never, ever had bugs in any soil Ive bought from Home Depot or and local hardware store, yet when a friend donated 3 Diesel Ryder autoflowering plants (2 female 1 male) to me a few weeks ago that had been planted in outdoor soil they had gnats allover them. I have treated a few times and have fly strips hanging up but now all 19 of my plants have gnats in the soil, YAY! At least its not spider mites or something that actually eats the foliage, but gnats still eat the nutrients in the soil & their larvae eat the roots so I still need to get rid of them.
Just get something without nutes and avoid the word organic, it basically means that the soil will be more acidic than cannabis prefers. Make sure to mix it with perlite then just add nutes to your water. For veg, use Alaska Fish Fertilizer (5-1-1) and Superthrive, both can be found at walmart.
KB
demonic1
Well-Known Member
You like to mix extra Perlite with Sunshine or Promix? I use Sunshine Mix 4 and Promix professional and they are fine without extra Perlite. Just seems like a lot of extra work. Mixing soil is messy and those two soils have a lot of Perlite already. Just for people who do not know, Sunshine 4 and Promix Professional are considered soilless mixes.
KolorBlind
Well-Known Member
Yeah you definitely dont have to, but cannabis loves a super airy medium. My 2 week old plants in just my sunshine mix were easily 3" shorter than my 2 week old ones after mixing in some perlite. I used about 3 parts sunshine mix to 1 part perlite, the soil is so airy & fluffy then.
And yeah technically its not really soil, most of them are 80-90% peat moss with finely chipped wood pieces & perlite/vermiculite. But the more loose/airy your medium is the easier and faster the roots can grow. Using promix or sunshine mix without extra perlite is still going to give you MUCH better results than a dense soil or organic soil mix. As far as the mess goes, Im growing pretty small scale so all I need is a 5gal bucket or 2 to mix in, plus I like to add blood meal to the soil I use for the first transplant. That Alaska Fish Fertilizer gets SUPER funky if it sits in a jug too long haha.
KB
demonic1
Well-Known Member
Yeah, for me to mix it would be too much hassle and I find it grows good enough to have to mix soil up. As for Alaska Fish Fertilizer, I am sure it works well but I just would not want that smell all the time. Many fertilizers out there do not stink like that and works really well that I will avoid the fish smell.
KolorBlind
Well-Known Member
Haha, so true, its definitely the last bottle Ill ever buy. It smells like a bucket of fish guts & feces. It was just all I saw at walmart, and Im too paranoid to order that shit online. Ill probably hit up a nursery here locally and either get a better soil mix going, or get some less stinky nutes to add to the water. I find that the schultz plant food 10-15-10 is GREAT for veg and early flower. At least for it being a walmart nute and DIRT cheap that is, FF nutes is what I would use if there was a hyrdo shop within 2 states from me
KB
tone702
Well-Known Member
Well I use scotts soil carried by most home depots.. and Ive never had problems with it with my seedlings, I always germinate in a plastic bag and a moist towel before throwing in to the soil, but never had any problem with scotts, it does have nuts but not enough to harm seedlings.. atleast mine, check out my plants couple weeks into flower in scotts soil..
