Here are a few simple recipes for crafting your own potting soil. These will be less hot than supersoil, you should be able to plant straight into them. Personally, i would NEVER use FFOF as the base soil - you're just asking for trouble with bugs, etc. Anyway, onto the recipes, these are courtesy of LumperDawgz from grasscity.com
Here is his most simple version:
50% Organic Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss (Alaska Peat brand specifically)
25% Organic Parboiled Rice Hulls
25% Homegrown EWC
To each 1 c.f. of potting soil I add the following:
4 - 5 cups of Canadian Glacial Rock Dust
1.5 cups of a mix I make up that consists of equal parts of kelp, neem and crab meals
Here is his more complicated mix:
So I'm new here and perhaps this isn't the correct sub-forum to post this but I would like to share the organic soil mix that I use for my MMJ garden. It's based on the 'LC Mix' that appears all over the web.
I start of with Sunshine Organic Growers Mix which consists of 40% organic peat moss, 30% organic coir (washed and inoculated with trichoderma spores), 10% perlite, 10% vermiculite and 10% pumice (medium size). The reasons that all 3 are added by the manufacturer has to do with the CEC (cation exchange capacity) of these 3 aeration amendments. The soil is ph adjusted with dolomite lime and is treated with organic yucca extract as a wetting agent.
This is a professional 'soilless mix' for the nursery plant industry. All of the products used are the best available.
BTW - Sunshine Mix is manufactured by Sun Gro Horticulture which also manufactures Black Gold products (their consumer line) and some other products that appear at Home Depot and Loews, etc. Sunshine Mixes are generally available in the Western US and ProMix is manufactured and distributed in the Eastern US. There is no difference between the 2 products if you're comparing apples to apples.
To the soil I add 25% organic compost, 1 cf. of pumice or rice hulls and that's the basic soil
To that I add 1 cup (per 1 cf.) seed meal (equal parts of canola, cottonseed, flaxseed and alfalfa) to replace the bloodmeal ('N') and organic fish bone meal (4-20-0) to replace the bonemeal in the original LC Mix.
About 1/4 cup of kelp meal and 1 tablespoon of mycorrhizal fungus to each 5 gallon pot and I sprinkle about 1/4 cup of neem seed meal as a top dressing.
I also forgot to include one of the most important ingredient - glacial rock dust. I add about 1/5 cf. of this to the soil mix.
That's it other than applying aerated compost teas at the beginning of the veg cycle and then again at the beginning of the flower cycle (a high-fungai tea facilitates the take-up of phosphorous). Just water and I hit them with a foiliar spray of fish enzyme and seaweed extract 1x a week and neem seed oil 2x times a week through veg and the first couple of weeks in the flower cycle to prevent mites and powdery mildew.
It works without any burning, stunted growth, whatever. Just add water.
HTH
This soil costs me less than $6.00 per cf. to put together.
Shoutout to Lumper for inspiring us all to be better and more knowledgeable organic gardeners! Hope he doesnt mind me reposting
If you're looking for more mixes besides Subs super soil I'd go for a stroll through the grasscity organic forums - you will find a plethora of homemade soil mixes that are much cheaper and much better IMO than anything you are going to make starting out with FFOF. Lumpers soil mix thread for example is around 150 pages long - plenty of recipes in there to get you inspired.
Also, just gotta ask - why are you so keen on bigger pots and bigger plants? It's rare to see anyone on here running a 30 gal or more pot inside, just wondering where the inspiration is coming from. Also, if you havent looked into Air-pots yet I would, the company definitely makes HUGE ones for nurseries and such, and with a root mass your size you could definitely benefit from their design (similar to smartpots, IMO better for a multitude of reasons).
Good luck!
