umm for soil i just ammend the natural clay soil here with either promix sunshine or fox farm ocean blend. if i got the money i go with the promix but if im runnin a little low i grab some fox farm. this year i only got a couple bags of promix so almost all mine are ammended with fox farm. as for strains i like to try a lot of new ones each year but a couple that i have stuck with for a couple years now are blue dream, platinum og, rasberry kush, and purple o.g. kush. blue dream is one of the best strains to grow outdoors. i dont know where u live but it grows great here in sac, finishes up in plenty of time. its also a big yielder which is a plus. but really it depends where ur at when it comes to pickin strains. im lucky enough that both sativas and indicas do well here. if u live somewhere where the first frost comes early i would recommend trying to get ur hands on some recon, finishes real quick and its some fire.