Here's a new soil formulation based on recent plants I've grown. I've concluded that if you have a 1 gallon fabric bag, the plants grow shorter (under 12") than if you use a 2 gallon bag and there's no loss in yield.
BUT, the nutrition needs to be well designed or they get spindly. So re-using soil is a no-no unless you can figure out how to "fix" it. I couldn't, tried several ways, got spindly 3 foot high plants.
Plants under 1 foot high are the easiest to grow under a 36W Levin LED bulb, and they'll yield more and better buds than an outdoor grow in full summer California sunlight. I was very surprised!
And no bugs. But, bud rot is possible. If you get the plants very short, the central bud will be very dense and smashed up against leaves. You have to have a fan circulating air, and make sure not to accidentally spill water on the leaves. And watch for little spider webs on the big bud. I had only 1 out of 20 indoor plants get the bud rot, but it still hurts.
Here's a recipe for 12 gallons of soil (from 1 standard sized bag of Ednas), which need no other additives to take the plant to maturity.
Of course you can tinker with the nutrients and make better buds, but it's a hassle. This is designed to stick 6 plants under a kitchen table in California, with 6 Levin grow lights, to produce pot with no trouble other than watering. Except perhaps for the pink light that radiates from your windows at night, making the neighbors talk.
As far as the pot quality, I don't smoke as much as I grow, so I've been able to give jars of buds to hardcore smokers (20 something party girl types). They said the quality was comparable to the medical marijuana that they buy. Smell maybe not as nice.
Curing them must be a real art.
An older man who's been smoking a long time said it wasn't as good as the best medical buds, and gave me a store bought bud to try.
Yes, not quite as strong. The professional growers do in fact know how to tinker.
For the rest of us, this is just fine. I've noticed there's an obsession with growing the absolute best on the forums, when in fact hobbyists don't really need to do that.
Plus you can save the best buds, do a kief or alcohol extraction on the less pretty buds, and use the results to boost the strength of the pretty buds. That'll exceed even high quality medical pot.
***************************** For 12 of 1 gallon fabric bags filled 90% full *******************************************
1.5cuft bag edna's best (probably could use fox farms) = $10.82
1/2cuft or 14.6quarts or 15 pounds Worm Castings = $15
4c (cups) EB Stones bat guano, or any high N bat guano (9:2:1) = $7.92.
4c Fish bone meal, high K (3-16-0) = $2.88
7 cups perlite = $0.80
2 tsp epsom salts = $0.09
1c Kelp Meal (Ascophyllum Nodosum) meal = $0.43 per soil batch.
1c Sul-Po-Mag = $1.35 per soil batch.
Osmocote (don't mix in, put in top 1-2 inches evenly): 1 Tbsp per gallon bag= 15.5grams*15.7= 6.56 ounces = $2.46
Total $41.75 to fill 12 bags = $3.48 each plant
Mix all but the osmocote. Add the osmocote to the top and blend it in an inch or so.
Finally, put some mosquito dunk on top if you plan to grow more than 1 plant! The gnats will go crazy without it.
Aside from the fact that this formula is kind of a mix of what everyone in the forums are saying, I've grown 20 dwarf autoflower plants using it. They stay short and VERY dark green, with big fat leaves. Two grew under 1 foot high, with a full 1.5 ounce yield which exceeds the 19W of light yield calculations by a little bit. They take 2.5 - 3.5 months to mature, depending on autoflower variety.
The plant height of under 1 foot allows clipping a Levin light to a dinner table , with the plant growing directly under it, and the beam pointing down covering it. If you get it just right, the plant seems to decide not to go up past the initial sprout (you can see, it doesn't go higher when the first real leaves start to grow). Super Skunk, Amnesia Haze, and Northern Lights stay short this way. Note: if the plant gets too tall, you can't use the kitchen table and have to search for a higher place to clip the light, which is surprisingly difficult in a normal home.
sul-po-mag is there to provide K, but it's also good because it's not completely soluble like the Epsom salts, and replaces the magnesium and sulfur more slowly, while the epsom salts might flush out during watering.
I previously used low N bat guano to get more P-K, but it's harder to get and a little expensive. So now the bat guano is supplemented with fish bone meal and the sul-po-mag.
issues and your not stupid 