Greets from the bottom of Africa : Cape Town Organic Grower

Hi Grow Buds

Mid 50's holistic thinker ... always looking at the bigger picture ... always trying to play connect the dots.

A bit of a crazy experimentalist ... still living life and exploring like a curious 12 year old.


First grow in over 10 years ... and first legal grow thanks to recent changes to our local laws.

Past Growing Experience

• cannabis plants
• psilocybin mushrooms
• pineapple & naartjie homebrew
  • to get me through our 2020 covid lockdown alcohol sales ban

Now trying to pool & combine & connect my experience & knowledge & research across those three types of recreational cultivation.

Going 100% Organic Living Soil

Using a variety of earthworms in bins ...
... to make my soil
... and as my canary in my coal mine

If I keep my delicate, sensitive, skin-breathing worms happy ... my plants should be happy.

That's my theory ... let's see how that pans out ...

Strains

A mixed bag of inherited & gifted & bag & harvested seeds

• Mostly sativa
• Some indica crosses

Outdoor Grow in Pots : Southern Hemisphere

• October
  • INDOOR
  • Germination in paper towels
  • OUTDOOR
  • Seedlings in polystyrene coffee cups
• November
  • OUTDOOR
  • Transplant into 4.5 litre / 1 gallon black planter bags
• December
  • OUTDOOR
  • Transplant into 25 litre / 6 gallon food grade drums

Ingredients : Soil Enrichment

Almost all of the below is being pre-processed by feeding through my worm bins

• excess fruit & veg from my local supermarket
  • broccoli
  • spinach
  • eggplant
  • cauliflower
  • baby marrows
  • - - -
  • apples
  • paw paw
  • strawberries
  • avocado pear
  • - - -
  • limited amount
    • potato
    • tomato
    • oranges
    • sweet potato
• kitchen waste from our house
  • rice
  • bread
  • teabags
  • weetabix
  • wheat germ
  • crushed egg shells
• - - -
• rabbit pellet droppings from our pet bunny
  • & bedding hay
  • & red wriggler earthworms which live naturally under the bedding
• racing horse manure from my local race course
  • & stable straw
• - - -
• wood ash from my local pizza parlour
• coffee grounds from my local coffee shop
• crushed prawn & crab shells from my local Chinese takeaway
• - - -
• epsom salts
• - - -
• fresh sea kelp collected from my local beach
  • chopped & pounded & mashed
  • added molasses & brown sugar
    • half fed to my worms
    • half brewing into tea
• - - -
• compost from our garden
  • mostly small brown leaves
  • & endemic african pink earthworms which live naturally in the compost bin
• hand ripped cardboard
  • corrugated cardboard boxes
  • egg cartons
  • toilet rolls
  • newspaper
• - - -
• and of course harvested from my worm bins
  • castings mixed into my soil
  • vermicompost mixed into my soil
  • & worm castings tea with molasses & brown sugar
• - - -
• using rainwater wherever possible
  • & including some algae growing in the rain barrel

Grow Medium : Final Mix

• 40% nursery potting soil
• 30% nursery compost
  • 1/3 is mushroom compost
    • made from chicken manure & straw
    • infused with mycelium
• 30% home-made vermicompost as above

Good luck, happy growing!

Welcome to the party!! Looks like you're well on your way to a great soil mix. I would post your mix over in the organics section and let those more experienced guys give their opinions What are you doing for aeration in your mix?

TaoRich said:

Hi Grow Buds

Mid 50's holistic thinker ... always looking at the bigger picture ... always trying to play connect the dots.

A bit of a crazy experimentalist ... still living life and exploring like a curious 12 year old.

A day without learning is a day wasted​

First grow in over 10 years ... and first legal grow thanks to recent changes to our local laws.

Past Growing Experience

• cannabis plants
• psilocybin mushrooms
• pineapple & naartjie homebrew
  • to get me through our 2020 covid lockdown alcohol sales ban

Now trying to pool & combine & connect my experience & knowledge & research across those three types of recreational cultivation.

Going 100% Organic Living Soil

Using a variety of earthworms in bins ...
... to make my soil
... and as my canary in my coal mine

If I keep my delicate, sensitive, skin-breathing worms happy ... my plants should be happy.

That's my theory ... let's see how that pans out ...

Strains

A mixed bag of inherited & gifted & bag & harvested seeds

• Mostly sativa
• Some indica crosses

Outdoor Grow in Pots : Southern Hemisphere

• October
  • INDOOR
  • Germination in paper towels
  • OUTDOOR
  • Seedlings in polystyrene coffee cups
• November
  • OUTDOOR
  • Transplant into 4.5 litre / 1 gallon black planter bags
• December
  • OUTDOOR
  • Transplant into 25 litre / 6 gallon food grade drums

Ingredients : Soil Enrichment

Almost all of the below is being pre-processed by feeding through my worm bins

• excess fruit & veg from my local supermarket
  • broccoli
  • spinach
  • eggplant
  • cauliflower
  • baby marrows
  • - - -
  • apples
  • paw paw
  • strawberries
  • avocado pear
  • - - -
  • limited amount
    • potato
    • tomato
    • oranges
    • sweet potato
• kitchen waste from our house
  • rice
  • bread
  • teabags
  • weetabix
  • wheat germ
  • crushed egg shells
• - - -
• rabbit pellet droppings from our pet bunny
  • & bedding hay
  • & red wriggler earthworms which live naturally under the bedding
• racing horse manure from my local race course
  • & stable straw
• - - -
• wood ash from my local pizza parlour
• coffee grounds from my local coffee shop
• crushed prawn & crab shells from my local Chinese takeaway
• - - -
• epsom salts
• - - -
• fresh sea kelp collected from my local beach
  • chopped & pounded & mashed
  • added molasses & brown sugar
    • half fed to my worms
    • half brewing into tea
• - - -
• compost from our garden
  • mostly small brown leaves
  • & endemic african pink earthworms which live naturally in the compost bin
• hand ripped cardboard
  • corrugated cardboard boxes
  • egg cartons
  • toilet rolls
  • newspaper
• - - -
• and of course harvested from my worm bins
  • castings mixed into my soil
  • vermicompost mixed into my soil
  • & worm castings tea with molasses & brown sugar
• - - -
• using rainwater wherever possible
  • & including some algae growing in the rain barrel

Grow Medium : Final Mix

• 40% nursery potting soil
• 30% nursery compost
  • 1/3 is mushroom compost
    • made from chicken manure & straw
    • infused with mycelium
• 30% home-made vermicompost as above

Click to expand...

Talk about living off the land! Welcome to RIU!
You picked a good spot.

Thanks for the welcome guys
@smokinrav
@GrassBurner
@HydroKid239

It's always cool to have company and conversation and encouragement


- - -

GrassBurner said:

Looks like you're well on your way to a great soil mix.

Click to expand...

Thanks ...

I've gone with a combination of reading & research and my past experience with cannabis & psilocybin mushrooms & homebrew.

I've developed quite a good nose for healthy shit ... in all senses of the word ... and have incorporated as much variety as I can forage, beg, borrow, or improvise.

My theory is that if I combine as much variation in raw materials and diversification of little creatures and micro-organisms ... the whole living ecosystem should balance itself out. If anything tries to take over or invade, there's something else that will chow down on it for breakfast and get it back in the healthy line.

GrassBurner said:

I would post your mix over in the organics section and let those more experienced guys give their opinions.

Click to expand...

Yes I will do. Thanks.

Just joined up last week ... getting myself ramped up with fellow grower interactions.

I will for sure be soliciting opinions & comments & advice from the wide range of experience & expertise here.

GrassBurner said:

What are you doing for aeration in your mix?

Click to expand...

I'm glad you brought that up.

My concerns about using worm processed substrate were

• Vermicompost can get quite fine and gunky
  • I need good drainage
    • good oxygen availability for healthy roots
  • I don't want an anaerobic sludge layer at the bottom
    • bad stuffs grow in the absence of oxygen
• I'm leaving some earthworms in my pot
  • which will reduce the substrate volume over time as they chow down
    • which could collapse the root's foothold
• I've got a fair amount of compost in there
  • which will erode in volume as the microbes and enzymes digest it
  • which will again reduce the substrate volume over time as the plant uses the nutrients
    • which could again collapse the root's foothold

So ... after much pondering ... I think I have come up with quite the solution


Here's a front view of my potting plan

You can see below that I'll have a specific rooting zone and column which will be 80% potting soil.

• I will be using
  • one bag of 'compost rich' potting soil
  • one bag of 'more sandy inert' potting soil

I'm only mixing in with that core:

• 10% nursery compost
• 10% 'starter' vermicompost + spent brewers mash + worm casting molasses tea + kelp molasses tea
  • that's a 'small life seeding amount' rather than much bulk

And here's a cross section view of the layers top to bottom



So the idea is

• the roots will be in potting soil with good drainage
  • getting them oxygen
• the potting soil will not shrink and the roots will hold firm where they grew
  • no root disturbance or collapse into clumps
• the roots will not grow directly in the living soil
  • they will only spread into that outer layer once they are well established
• when I water ... the water will draw soluble nutrients out of the living soil layer
  • and infuse downwards and sideways into the potting soil root zones
• the earthworms will keep feeding and breaking down any residual partially composted material in my living soil layer
  • so my roots won't directly encounter zones of (temperature) hot or (nutrient) hot composting
• the earthworms will start cruising between the soil zones
  • and their burrow paths should hep with aeration for oxygen
  • and their airy burrows should encourage a more microbial rich ecosystem

And finally

• the substrate shrinkage due to composting & feeding & digestion & breakdown & absorption will occur in the circular outer of the pots
  • but the inner root column will not be affected
• so that means I can top layer around the outer edges of the pot
  • to replace the substrate shrinkage over time
• with
  • decomposing & rotting dried sea kelp
  • more vermicompost from my earthworm bin
  • a little mushroom compost to get fungi life going in my topsoil

That's the plan ... let's see how that works in progress.

- - -

Where I am at now

My living soil is all ready now

• a 50 litre barrel of it
  • now resting in a final two weeks of earthworm feasting
  • already mixed in molasses and kelp tea and kelp strips to get the rhizobacteria humming

I'll be loading and filling the pots with the substrate this weekend coming

• two sections as above
  • removing 90% of the worms out of the living soil
• adding my brewers spent grains which is rich in a different family of microbes & enzymes
  • 2/3 of that into the living soil
  • 1/3 into the potting soil

And then letting that all settle for one more week and start to integrate and bloom with invisible life

2nd week of December is transplant time

All my hard work is pretty much done.

I will soon have time to start taking pics and set up a proper grow journal.

- - -

Sorry for the long post !!!

Typing my scattered thoughts into more or less comprehensible and communicable sentences helps me focus.

Comments actively solicited.

Cheers
Rich

- - -

I feed my earthworms well
My earthworms feed my soil well
My healthy soil breeds a broad spectrum of microbial life
And the microbial ecosystem is my army of invisible underground gardeners

Perlite does wonders for aeration and drainage