A little advice for using happy frog

My local grow shop dude highly recommended happy frog over ocean frost which I’ve always used. He said I would be way happier with the results of frog because you have a lot more control over everything. My question I didn’t ask him at the time is if I should add perlite to it? Anyone else have any recommendations for using the frog? He also said all you need for nutrients is the fox farm fruit and flower top dressing.

I use HF for seedlings and add 20% perlite to it and aside from OF I don't use anything else from FF

Dude is selling you stuff. If you use HF you will have to feed sooner and more. Putting money in his pocket. Mix the 2 and topdress with OF & EWC.

I found seedlings and clones didn’t like OF. Did great in HF.
I use happy frog for veg and then transplant to 3-5g OF for flower.

I then top dress with EWC and Gia green 444 and 284 a few times

They like to suggest things so they can sell you more shit later. So they sold you some soil AND a bag of top dressing. Now you have more “control” over things. See how that works? The FFOF is a bit stouter in the npk dept than HF but other than that there’s not all that much difference between them.
I would add perlite and about 1/3 EWC using either mix; both are good organic soil choices btw. You could’ve just got worm castings and ocean forest and skipped the top dressing but happy frog with added extra NPK will do much the same thing. Perlite will help lighten up heavy compost and add aeration.
Worm castings are what drive your mix; microbial activity is as important if not more than npk inputs. If you skip adding compost then at some point your mix will fall away; aka ph lockout. Then you’ll need to give nutrients in soluble form to finish the grow or give compost teas to recharge the mix. A “depleted” mix is one that has become inactive. This is always the challenge with organics; keeping a container of soil highly active over the long term.
Consider also aquiring some granular mycorrhizae which helps with absorption and regulates moisture in soil. Sprinkle it on at each transplant and plan to transplant into fresh soil a few times. These two things will help prolong viability of your mix so that your FF fruit and flower top dressing could be all you’ll need for npk.

^^^^ This …..

EWC / PERLITE or Pumice

Yeah, add 30% coarse perlite in a bucket, maybe a little less in a bag.

It could definitely benefit from perlite. Ocean Forest is known to be a bit boggy.

Budzbuddha said:

^^^^ This …..

EWC / PERLITE or Pumice

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what's EWC?

Popop said:

what's EWC?

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Earth Worm Castings.

Don't use Fox Farms soil would be my advice.
I'd look into Super Soil. Many companies make & sell it. I've had good success with M3 Mix (michigan made mix) and BuildaSoil. Cleaner and you can fine tune it, they also have premixed blends.

calvin.m16 said:

Don't use Fox Farms soil would be my advice.
I'd look into Super Soil. Many companies make & sell it. I've had good success with M3 Mix (michigan made mix) and BuildaSoil. Cleaner and you can fine tune it, they also have premixed blends.

Click to expand...

What's shitty about it?