My First No-Till Soil - Advice/Feedback Pls
- Thread starter Hazephase
- Start date
GreenSanta
Well-Known Member
I have never ever made the exact same recipe more than once. and it get s weirder everytime, last summer I sorta made a hot compost pile using a bunch of used soil (old old old ammended promix) and mix that with grass clipping chicken shit and all kind of stuff, mixed it a few time and I had a nice ''supersoil'' lol
I still sometimes think it would be nice to start from scratch everytime and dial in a perfect recipe but I love to keep cheap and simple, for the most part everything works out great as long as there are worms in the pots, and every once in a while it turns out phenomenal. I enjoy that style of growing.
Kind Sir
Well-Known Member
You know I see others who have it simple and cheap, like wet dog and feel like I'm overthinking things. I put too much thought into just the recipe, when I could read on more important stuff. I guess I'm just trying to follow the basicness (weird looking word) of others' recipes
GreenSanta
Well-Known Member
When I first started growing weed, I went to the hydro store and they sold me Bottle A and Bottle B , I had a 400 watts or 2 and I thought I m gonna crush it lol. My weed was not nearly as strong or good than the stuff I could buy. The following winter is when I found out about subcool s supersoil and how all you had to do was use water ( by then I was really passionate about organic food in general ) So my first recipe I used ingredients I could find locally but it was inspired from subcool, so it was close in some ways. Then everytime I started to improvise more, then I started to re-use my soil, and truly, if you have the biology, bugs, worms, etc, and you can provide decent environment (I like fresh air 24-7 and I can do this because I use LEDs but most people intake from outside and they dont have the 24-7 fresh air luxury) you will realize that most of it comes down to genetics, when you find that special plant, you will find that it doesnt matter how you grow it, it might change a little bit, a little more like this if you used bat guano, a little more like this if you over do the alfalfa, but over all, its always ball park in the flavor and looks.
Most people are over thinking it, that said sometimes I push the boundaries in my experiment and you have to still pay the bills (hydro ...) so following a recipe and sticking with it can be a good thing I guess, but finding the right genetic is even more important imo
Chronikool
Well-Known Member
You have one of the best philosophies....i say this cos i can identify with it well ...and have for a while...
I have nothing further to add...
greasemonkeymann
Well-Known Member
like I keep telling people..
free leaves
free grass clippings
you don't really need anything past that, I mean sure, I add stuff past that..
but you could grow beautiful amazing plants with just that.
and for free, if you could grow some comfrey, dandelion, and nettles?
then you'd not only have a free grow, but a damn good one at that.
I do like my neem meal, kelp meal, and so on
but I've done JUST a compost grow and I couldn't tell the difference, the only diff was that it ran dry on nitrogen a lil quicker than my "fortified" compost made with slower nitrogen inputs
more "free" stuff to put in compost piles are rotted fruit (high in phosphorus), dog hair clippings (VERY high in super slow release N)
craigslist can net you manures of all sorts for nearly free
hell a big ass bag of steer manure is like 5 bucks
I always say, after a bunch of tinkering many of the veteran growers start dialing everything back, just to see what we actually truly need, and as it seems it's less and less.
I used to do alllll sorts of complex labor intensive teas and such, and I just don't anymore.
AACTs, SSTs, nutrient teas, all those are totally superfluous in a well made soil, with fresh sourced humus
well, not totally sure about the SSTs, but those are a lot of work..
greasemonkeymann
Well-Known Member
shit, and as the nation progresses more and more, the hydro companies are swindling pot-growers (which to a degree, they deserve it, DYODD fellas)
but at least for you it was just bottle A and B
these poor dudes are convinced they need a fuckin lineup.
no shit..
like a baseball team..
or this
fuckin pisses me off..
not sure why it does, considering I don't get along with most growers anyways
ShLUbY
Well-Known Member
so what did you discover to be the right amount of drainage material for you?? 45-50%?
hillbill
Well-Known Member
50% or so. My mix is almost gravel like at harvest. I alternate mild alfalfa teas, clear water and compost/casting teas throughout but no nutes in those compost teas really. Overwatering with my mix is almost impossible. Overwatering is a big and very common problem. It can cause deficiencies through lockout which might make the grower feed more, making things progressively worse.
I too fell into the myth of mj being some sort of special unicorn to grow organically, even after 30+ years of growing exotics that really were unicorns. Had a import license and the whole 9 yards.
Anyway, the first couple of years were "mj specific" recipes, teas and about 13 different dry amendments with results that were less than spectacular. The only real smart moves were starting a worm bin and planting a comfrey bed right from the start. Both of those became game changers.
Easily 95% of what I grow is container veggies that we eat a lot of, but are expensive, like herbs, peppers, garlic, etc. The mj is mainly saving some very special genetics that is going on 8 years now. The same mix is used for everything, which gives a lot of observation for how the mix performs for different plants.
Nothing was doing really well, the mix was just way too dense, until I finally went back to the basic mix I've always used and started tweaking it for organics. Fewer amendments, less of what I did use and bumping up the aeration to compensate for the heavy organic inputs, VC, seed meals, etc. and more top dressing rather than adding to the mix. Teas went the way of the dodo, the top dressing worked just as well with way less effort. The number of dry amendments is like 5 or less, a loooong way from the 13 or so from years ago.
Like GreenSanta, most of what I have now is used mix and it gets reamended by eye, feel, and smell. There is no set pattern to this.
I know this wasn't directed to me, but *I* end up with close to 50%. Right at 40% perlite and another 10% from pine bark fines in fresh mixes. This gets adjusted over time as the bark fines break down and become humus. Then, it's eyeball time.
Wet
Wilderb
Well-Known Member
I guess I was always wary of pine because of hearing about being too acidic.
Now it seems that's not the case, based on what I've read as of late.
WE
greasemonkeymann
Well-Known Member
me too, i'm easily at 40% aeration too, at least, and i'm a big believer in using varying types as well, anything that can hold air and water and help drainage
hillbill
Well-Known Member
Over time my mix has a bit of more and more different stuff through reuse. Also fond of multiple sources for nutrients etc. with reusin or no-till organic fast acting amendments like blood meal are not needed. If N is needed a nice Alfalfa or Neem or Flax or combo is nice. Plant meal teas are great fun. Kelp to.
I fell into the same trap early on with the mj specific recipes in regards to pine bark.
The mix I learned in 1972 (no internet, or even anything written down), was peat moss, perlite, pine bark fines, a shovelful of sheep manure and the same of Oolitic limestone screenings (ancient coral deposits, SoFl is pretty much solid Oolitic limestone). This mix even though everyone used Jack's Classic since everything was non edible. The mix just worked and I was fortunate to have this knowledge passed to me.
Anyway, sitting on the deck after a beer or 4 and looking at some less than happy pepper plants, it dawned on me that I had put aside a mix that had worked well for decades and gone to something that was basically just an opinion, a stoners wet dream of an ideal mix.
Went back to what I knew and worked from there, letting observation dictate changes, not internet opinions.
Wet
greasemonkeymann
Well-Known Member
may be an older quote, but I somehow missed this one. and it's damn PRICELESS advice.
too often change/experimentation is done unnecessarily (human nature to tinker with shit)
and too often that change/experimentation is done with the entire grow
and furthermore too often that course of action is predicated on a hydro-store person's advice...
baaaaad idea there...
that's entirely too common... people tinkering with soil recipes and using it for all their plants..
another piece of advice is to NOT make more than one change at a time..
learned that workin on cars... too much changed at once is nearly impossible to decipher what went wrong.. or conversely, what went right.
so aeration, base ingredients, containers, lights, even placement of the plants all that has to be under control and evenly done to ensure minimal discrepancies
and all experiments should have a control subject, ideally from clone, be well documented, double tagged (one on the plant AND the container), and in a perfect world? done on a plant other than cannabis.
yet another good use for comfrey, they seem to have the exact preferences that cannabis does.
jasmine, roses, most veggies, etc.
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Tangerine_
Well-Known Member
I just ordered a comfrey plant to start too. I put in a container filled with recycled soil but now I'm thinking it should be in the ground to get the most out of it as a topdress.
Also had someone gift me a massive aloe.
Now all I need is to find a good source of coconut water.
Anyone got any recs?