ive never used this recipe before but it seems like it would be good. if anything, i know the source of this info is credible as the 3 little birds were the shit.
We are about to gototally against the advice that Cervantes and Rosenthal and many others give concerningsoil . . . the three little birds want to tell people that we ALWAYS re-use oursoil . . . No soil has left the garden's of the three little birds since beforethe turn of the millennium . . .
we were discussing this among "the birds" the other night andone line that a little bird said comes to mind . . . "Farmer's don't striptheir topsoil after a harvest - or even a few - in fact their soil is theirmost precious commodity - why should it be different for indoor gardening aslong as proper care is taken to build healthy soil?"
Some experts will tell folks to throw out their soil after every grow . . .and we've known plenty of commercial growers that happily comply to make surethey do not have pest or nutrient problems. . . Maybe that even is the bestsolution for your grow, we can't say for sure, as always your mileage may vary.. .
We are poor simple medical users . . . and spending something like $20 for abag of Fox Farm soil rubbed us wrong . . . our indoor herb grows have evolvedto use 2'x3' containers . . . so with our container system it might take 2+full bags of that soil for 3 plants in one of those containers . . . Thethree little birds wanted to save ourmoney to purchase top quality genetics . . . not to buy simple dirt . . . so wedecided there had to be a better way!
Now again . . . someone who is involved in commercial (rather than personalmedical) production might not be so inclined to bother with making sure theirsoils stay healthy and all the work we go through to ensure our soil's health.. . but for us it is a labor of love and we feel our results speak forthemselves. . . anyway, like we said . . our soil never leaves our grow . . .it has all been recycled to the point that we could not even begin to tell youhow many times it's been through our system . . .
A good commercial potting mix has always been the base for our soil. . . Welook for a product which is 100% organic . . . we recommend that you avoid ALLchemical salt ferts like the plague if you value your soil health. . . This especially includes timed-released chem ferts like osmocote . . .
Depending on what we have found for soil . . . we go from there. . . Some cheaporganic soil mixes contain little more than peat, pearlite, and dolomite lime.. . These absolutely need amending to start off. . . Some organic soil mixesare much more complete and need little or no amending for starters. . .
Organic mushroom compost is certainly one of the hot soil mediums these days .. . and we've certainly had great success mixing it in with our soil remixes toadd fresh organic matter. . . we often have top-dressed with fresh mushroomcompost as well . . . after a couple years of experience with mushroom compost. . . weve found it to be a great source for an indoor soil base . . . andits proven to work well with remixes . . .
Now well walk you through a description of the soil building process . . .lets imagine we started with an already amended soil mix like Fox Farm OceanForest as the base . . . perhaps mixed and with mushroom compost andadded perlite . . .
Once through it's first grow (the plants fed only 100% organic with earthjuice, guano and alfalfa teas, fish ferts, and liquid kelp). . . our containerof soil has it's root balls pulled and it is dumped into a very largerubbermaid container w/ a lid (50 gallon container is our standard) . . . Thesecontainer's are longer than our 2x3 growing containers, so with 2 peoplelifting and dumping . . . it's not too hard to keep this step neat. . . Eachbin can actually hold more than the contents from a single grow-container . . .2 grow-containers of soil will actually fit, but this makes mixing inamendments very difficult and messy. . .
Now we proceed to give back to our soil mix what our plants have taken (andthen some) . . . We get out our kelp meal, bone meal, alfalfa (or blood) meal,greensand, rock phosphate, diatomaceous earth, and dolomite lime and getmixing. . . Depending on the soil's condition this is also where we might add alittle more pearlite if soil compaction looks to be a potential problem. . .
Folks are going to ask us how much of these different supplements we add, andthe only honest answer we can give is - it depends! If the plants we'd raisedpreviously in that particular container had shown any signs of being short on amajor nutrient . . .it's not too hard to throw in an extra cup or two of theappropriate organic supplement . . .for example wed add extra Blood meal oralfalfa for N - Bone meal for P - kelp meal for K and other micro nutrients . ..
A nice full 16 oz plastic dixie cup of each of the prior mentioned ingredientswould be our baseline for supplementing this round of soil re-mix. . . thatactually equals a measurement of 2 cups (1 pint) . . . We will generally doublethis amount if any nutrient shortage has shown. . .
The greensand and rock phosphate are very slow to dissolve and be absorbed byplants, and are not normally used by many indoor container gardeners. . . Theirslow release is what helps to make our system work . . . They will still be inour soil for the next couple of grows, doing their part for our soil health. ..
This is the point where we would also add some of our own compost assumingthere is some finished and ready . . . if not some mushroom compost has provento work . . . Our compost is made from the usual standards, household veggiefood scraps and such . . . with the addition of all our used grow scraps. . .Fan leaf, chopped stems, and the "leftover's" from processing bybubble bag or tumbling are all composted and returned to the soil. . .
Now we will wet this whole mix down lightly and let it "cook" for aspell. . . We have a couple of large bins like this for soil remixing andcomposting. . . Folks always want us to be specific on amounts and times, andwe do a lot of this by feel, so when we say we let the soil cook for a"spell" - how long depends on feel and need . . .
The minimum time our soil sits is two weeks . . . and it's sat waiting for usefor a couple months like this during slower times or shut-downs in our grow . .. This time gives soil bacteria a chance to work and make the various organicamendments more quickly and easily available for our plants. . .
Now for the second grow . . . We use this soil again for another grow, wateringwith our usual array of teas, Earth Juice, etc. . . If needed, containers aretop-dressed with compost (our own or mushroom compost depending onavailability) as any soil settling occurs. . .
Upon yet another successful harvest . . the soil is reconditioned again . . .Once we reached our third mix of soil, we cut back on some of the soilamendments. . . The greensand and rock phosphate are still working from thelast re-mix so we don't need to add any more of them for sure. . . .Whatremains in your soil at this point in terms of nitrogen and such may depend onyour strain, some strains are much more greedy for some nutrients . . .
As an example of this technique . . . if our plants haven't shown any signs ofyellowing as they mature, we figure there is nitrogen enough in the soil forthe next round (at least to get started - we can add more N on the fly withfish ferts and teas if needed) . . and no alfalfa / blood meal would be added.. . If yellowing has occurred then a nitrogen supplement is added again. . . asweve gotten more adept at remixing our soils . . .
Just as a note about nitrogen sources . . . weve found that over time we cannow judge better how much of the amendments to mix in from the beginning . . .and as weve increasingly switch from blood meal to alfalfa . . . weve foundthat we can add alfalfa meal with every soil remix . . .
Kelp meal is always added again since many of the major liquid organic fertsseem a little short on potassium, and also because we like the micro nutrientskelp meal provides to our plants. . . Dolomite lime will usually be necessaryagain too . . .and it's possible your soil will need even more lime this timethan last. . . Any peat in the soil adds acidity as it decomposes, and the limebalances this as well as providing magnesium. . .
After the standard 15 - 30 days of standing moistened waiting for use this soilis used still another time. . . Now our soil has grown 4 crops of herbs and isstill going and growing strong. . . At this point, we have started plants inour soil remixes directly alongside plants in fresh potting soil, just to makesure our mix wasn't subtly stunting our plants. . .
The result was that the plants grown in our 4th and 5th generation soil remixdid far better than those directly alongside grown in fresh from the bag FoxFarm Ocean Forest potting soil!
Because our garden was designed to be a continuous harvest setup . . . once weare to our 4th or 5th remix, it's starting to get hard to keep track of exactlywhat soil has been remixed where . . since half used bins of remixes are oftendumped together to make room for another round of used soil coming from thegarden . . So from here we simply continue adding amendments by feel as needed.. . as weve already described . . .
This is how the three little birds use soil. . . We know we break the rule wehave all been told to follow - to never reuse soil. . . Even those"radicals" we have seen reusing soil, have always described lettingtheir soil go out to their flower beds after 3 or 4 grows. We decided to pushthe envelope and see how far we could take it . . .
We still haven't found a limit for the number of times we remix our soil, andour harvests and plant vigor keep improving. . .
Oh . . just to add another bit of heresy . . . folk who have checked out ourpicture gallery at CW may have noticed our container grows suspended above thefloor on wheeled furniture movers. . . It's a very convenient way to keep theplants in larger containers mobile. . . but you also must realize then (if youthink about it) that out grow containers have NO drainage. . .
Our soil mix . . . which now has been remixed double digit times . . . hasNEVER been flushed!
one more thing we might add - we certainly would not remix soil from anycontainers where we'd had a bug or disease problem - even getting bud moldwould be enough for us to say - no thanks to a soil remix . . . if disease orpests strike your soil it will need to be discarded . . . otherwise we're stillreusing the same soils in 2004 we used in 2003 . . . and those were used in2002 and 2001 and 2000 etc . . .
our methods may not be for everyone . . . and we strongly encourage folk to usea keen eye to watch and "listen" closely to their plants . . . whenwe open a container of our remixed soil after it's "composted" . . .it smells like fresh earth . . . and as long as that's the case we plan to keepusing ours . . .
As a final note . . . we are proud to report that earthworms live in our soilremixes now. . . not the big fat night crawlers that many folks associate withthe word "worm" . . . these are smaller red wigglers . . . ourcontainer gardens aren't ideal habitat for worms . . . they are really tooshallow . . . so in many ways we are amazed that worms manage to live in ourindoor garden . . . and we use fish ferts and earth juice ferts in fairly highconcentrations . . . again we are a little amazed that worms tolerate this . .. but we've had plenty of worms (red wigglers) showing up in containers thathad been through their entire bloom cycle as they were being remixed forrecycling . . .
