Recycled Organic Living Soil (ROLS) and No Till Thread

kushking42

Well-Known Member
another old skool winner in my garden that i picked up in clone form is white widow. no mold mildew or bug issues. doesnt mind the cold. she yields well in the spring in crappy weather. for full season she is done @the beginning of october.

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SpliffAndMyLady

Well-Known Member
probably gonna need a little more to re-mineralize all my soil. i think i have like 80 yards here on site. pvfs will send a pallet anywhere for $99.. be nice to find it locally though. sux dte doesnt have it anymore. as long as you spend enough they charge $50 per bobtail for delivery
Pardon me, but how much is a bobtail?
 

kushking42

Well-Known Member
bobtails are usually 27' i dont know if they use semis or not. when you place your wholesale order with dte and you spend $750 they will ship it to you for $50. my order weighed around a ton and fit on one pallet. i think i spent around $850
 

Cann

Well-Known Member
kk what state are you in? have you looked into basalt dust? i have a source here in southern california for bulk basalt dust...i think it comes in #2000 crates. i can get you the contact info/all the data sheets if you want to compare mineral levels. it is from a company called cascade minerals. they are based out of OR i believe, so if you are anywhere on the west coast, chances are you can get your hands on that stuff for cheap. most likely cheaper than shipping dust from canada...maybe not though so don't quote me on that. i use their dust in my soil mixes...but I buy it in the 44lb bags LOL. not big time like you my friend
 

headtreep

Well-Known Member
Hell yeah thanks for assisting! Cool to help each other out. I had to order my basalt just like my glacial rock dust. I live far from city limits and it didn't cost too much. Now if I was outdoor that would be a whole other thing. I need to move back to the golden state already haha!!!!
 

Mohican

Well-Known Member
Lava sand is another amendment I have been researching. Have any of you seen or heard about this? Maybe I will crush some of the red lava rock and pumice and germ a seed in it :)

I am always worried about other trace elements in some of these mineral mixes. Uranium, arsenic, mercury...?
 

Kalyx

Active Member
Flo is the bomb. My pheno is more of a 50/50 not a sativa dom. She has it all fruit, spice, freshness, superb smell and bag appeal and oh yeah THE FUNK.
If I was king I would only consume my meds in IWE form, so I choose genetics on how they spin in the ice in addition to the usual grow/flower/resin characteristics.
I mostly grow lower yielding, stingier relatives of the chem dawg lineage due to their high yields of full melt Ice wax. I grow for resin quality first and foremost. Currently I have Blue Dream, Blackberry kush (about to come down, yum), OG kush, OG #18, Sour Kush, Sour Diesel, SAGE and Bodhi's Elf Snack. My Flo is a buddies fav strain and he is holding that and my Island Sweet Skunk, Romulan x AK, and good ol' Blueberry. I like the original 2nd and 3rd wave genetics myself. Proven, stable and quality is the name of the game. If only I still had my Jack Herer circa '96 skunk dom pheno still, and Krystal Spike... those are the ones that got away from me (and all the peeps I left moms with!, Moving sucks man!) Plant count is limited to try too much of the new waves of breeding! Seeds and herms have been lots of work and heartbreak lately (caliconnect tahoe OG herm city, CBD strain hermed finally, Bubba dubble snowman only had one undesirable non-herm pheno) However the Blackberry Kush was from seed and the heaviest one lately White Widow x Bubba.

Off to germany for a long time coming vacation. What am I gonna do with no gardening chores and weed nerding for a whole month. I hope the internet connection can keep me tied in here! Keep up the good organic farming while I'm gone, send my caretaker good vibes so I will come home to just as happy a garden as I left. I trust he'll do a great job!

Before I left I mixed up 6 cu ft of reamended ROLS mix to cook while I'm gone. 1/4 humus, 1/4 pumice 1/2 used living soil. Plus Coot and Cans amendments plus more because I do not have the super alive castings and compost that they hold up as the center of the whole system. Smart pot worm farm to commence immediately after Germany! I cannot wait to get home and battle the heat for some big greasy nugs! Later on BUDS!
 

Rising Moon

Well-Known Member
Rising Moon's Organic Living No Till, 20 gallon soil mix:

( I made this mix as 'off the shelf' as I could to make things simple, but a number of amendments can be added, or substituted, and this is by no means an end all mix, just one of many I am experimenting with, and having great results..)

The base mix is: 1/3 Coco (or Peat) 1/3 Perlite 1/3 Compost

First off, I like to use "PieceCoir Coco", its a chunky stringy shredded coco, similar to small woodchips/stringy coco fibers, it is GREAT food for worms/microbes and will slowly break down into humus, without becoming acidic.

View attachment 2612106

Next up is Chunky Perlite, its got big pieces that hold water and space for microbes to live inside.

View attachment 2612111

And finally Compost, or in this case, Worm Castings and Alaska Humus mixed together bag for bag. (normally I make all my own compost, but fall garden applications and winter slow down have forced me to buy in humus for now.. I cant wait for summer, not only veggie season, but COMPOST season as well)

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Next up are the dry amendments, as follows:

2 1/2 cups Crab Meal
2 1/2 cups Kelp Meal
2 Cups Diatomaceous Earth (Calcium Bentonite) (can be substituted with any other glacial rock dust, or greensand)
2 cups Fossilized Guano (0-8-1) Soluble
2 cups dried eggshells (can be substituted with limestone)
1 1/2 cups mixed dried herbs (dandelion, yarrow, horsetail, chamomile, alfalfa, nettle)
1 cup "Earth ReCharge" Biodynamic preperations
1/4 cup French Green Clay
1/2 packet of Roots Oregonism Xl (Fungi/Bacteria)
1 Gallon of wood Charcoal


At this point I like to mix all the dry stuff with the compost blend. But first want to point out 2 things that will make this job much more pleasant...

#1 a kiddie pool, for mixing soil, #2 a dust mask, those rock dusts and crab/kelp meals are dangerous to breathe, dont be fooled because they are natural..

Mask:Pool.jpg
Dry Amend.jpg

Once this is THOROUGHLY mixed, Ill add the Coco and Perlite:

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And, once again thoroughly mix this all up until..

mixed soil.jpg

Now, I like to fill the bottom of my pots with about an inch of perlite/charcoal so they have some breathing room/drainage on the floor

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Now the pots are ready to be filled... (you will want to leave some room for top dressing later on..)

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And top dressed with some more rough Coco..

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Now, I will let these sit for a few weeks, give them a few compost teas to boost things up, and will then add worms from my bin to fully activate the food web, before planting a quick cover crop of oats/clover. Once this grows to about 6 inches tall, Ill chop it all down, near the roots and leave it as a mulch.

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The pots are then ready to plant, and should yield magnificent herb for years to come, only needing the annual top dress of amended compost, a green manure crop/undersow and the occasional compost/herbal tea.

Just like real deal farming outside on the earth, but inside, with created earth and small pots.
 

Kalyx

Active Member
Danks RM. I wish I had that post one day earlier. I stayed up till midnight last night making my mix before I leave town for 4 weeks so it can get a nice food web cooking! Keep the gems coming RM. Truly organic indoors and out!
 

snowboarder396

Well-Known Member
Very nice Rising Moon, As for the green clay, Ive been re-reading Teaming with Microbes, and I was reading where clay is the smallest of all the particles compared to sand, etc. and actually if I remember correctly Clay can produce some of the best Micro activity. Gives the bacteria and fungi good places to stick too. Soil also has its own electrical interaction with root hairs exchanging Cations (positive particles and Anions( negative. One of the many ways nutrients are taken up and provided.

It stated it was best in Clay, however as we all know clay would be to compact and holds water to well= poor drainage. Another reason why humus is so good, because its somewhat like clay, with more organic material and current exchanges.

I believe it said for outdoors the best soil is silty loam.
 

Cann

Well-Known Member
greensanta - you'd be surprised how many cycles you can get out of a pot if it is topdressed after every cycle with quality EWC, compost, and some simple amendments (neem, kelp, crab, etc.). many folks do this for years and the quality of the soil only improves. i'm sure rising moon won't have any issues getting 4 harvests out of that pot :)


oh yeah and snowboarder the key word there is CEC (cation exchange capacity) - clay has an extremely high CEC compared to other materials due to particle size. this is why folks like rising moon add a bit of clay to the soil, because it increases the nutrient holding capacity. teaming with microbes is a great book eh?
 

grnhrvstr

Well-Known Member
Thanks for that Rising Moon.Its all comming together nicely now.I cant wait to play around with this a bit.
 

fattiemcnuggins

Well-Known Member
my fave out of the 35 or so strains I've grown is grape goo. has a unique smell, think spicy grapey kush. I also have a really nice sweet thai cut I found from bagseed but I am letting that cut go and popping a few more s.t. seeds looking for a more stable one. in the waiting room..bubblegum, blue cheese, sour apple.
trying some new stuff from seed too. sssdh. og jones. ATF bagseed(I'm a sucker for a fire bagseed). played w some pollen also, have a couple blue chubblegum kush seedlings.
 

snowboarder396

Well-Known Member
Thanks cann, I meant to put cec down but forgot, and seems no matter how many times I read thay book you always learn something new!
 

GreenSanta

Well-Known Member
I really like jordan of the island, the best strains I have grown over the last year were nycd soma, spacebomb tga, oh god (jordan), blue city diesel (jordan), medicine (next gen) and SLH... i liked Agent Orange but the yield was so large I got sick of smoking it!! these are out of roughly 25 strains I have grown (often only 1-2 plants per strain...)
 

sullivan666

Active Member
my fave out of the 35 or so strains I've grown is grape goo. has a unique smell, think spicy grapey kush. I also have a really nice sweet thai cut I found from bagseed but I am letting that cut go and popping a few more s.t. seeds looking for a more stable one. in the waiting room..bubblegum, blue cheese, sour apple.
trying some new stuff from seed too. sssdh. og jones. ATF bagseed(I'm a sucker for a fire bagseed). played w some pollen also, have a couple blue chubblegum kush seedlings.
You got an ATF bagseed? You mean Alaskan Thunderfuck, yeah? I hope so, I got one for my first grow and that was by far my best plant to date. I'm considering buying some of Dr Greenthumb's Matanuska seeds to see if they're anything close.
 

GrowBrooklyn

Well-Known Member
When you top dress in no till, do you take a few inches of old soil off first? If not, doesn't the pot eventually get full?
 
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