No till, raised beds, scrog- starting from seed

Bigdogfirecrotch said:
Is there any advantage in starting in peat pellets over just putting them in soil?
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personally I like to soak the seeds until they "oyster"
then before the root even comes out, plant it in a party cup, with old soil in it, or "seed-starter" mix.
It's good in there for at least 20 days, depending on how much light you blast em with
 
m4s73r said:
Well first off your only going to make 292.5 gallons of soil. with 18.3 gallons per pot. you want some room on top.
So you will need
97.5 gallons each of peat moss, aeration, and compost. or 13 cubic ft each. Then its just figuring up your mix. I use Coots recipe @ .5 cup each of Neem, Crap, and kelp and 4 cups of minerals per cubic ft.
So you would want about 10 gallons of mineral and 3.5 gallons of nutrient.
Sourcing all of that with shipping was pricey. BAS has box kits of the nutrients and minerals already measured out. Would run you $200+ shipping. 5 large boxes with some to spare. Id proly throw it all in.

Or you can just buy it pre-made from BAS for $550 + shipping. Not saying you cant do it cheaper then that sourcing all the shit. But when I did a price comparison it was only 80 bucks cheaper for me. Not including the shipping. thats what kills you. Figure with shipping proly around $1000. But its mixed cooked and ready to go. YMMV.

Are you doing no tills or will you be recycling? For me I do 20 gal no tills. if i was recycling id proly only do 15s with around 13 gallons of soil. Which is pretty close to 1 yard of soil. BAS has that at 350 plus shipping.

Some things to think on i guess.
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Are you referring to build a soil?

I've been pricing my soil and they are local for me.
 
Awesome so I can start my beans at the same time as I make my soil...

That will save me a month of waiting. once my compost and rice hulls show up this week I am finally done sourcing everything! Can't wait to mix it all up
 
I prefer using the paper-towel method to sprout, then to a small pot, followed by a one-gallon. Next, depending on plant growth, it's going into a 2-gal, 3-gal, or 3.5-gal. Afterwards it will end up in a 5-gal or 7-gal. I don't use bigger because i like to start a lot of plants and see what pops up. I have over 5' plants in 7 gallon. I have smaller plants blooming in 3-gallon as well. I'm not using fertilizer's at all with fresh soil. I agree with the guy's. Individual containers are simpler for managing plants, organizing plants by size, and watering. Plants don't use water uniformly in soil. If you water everything at the same time for convenience-sake you'll have some water-logged plants. If you have the lights and other equipment just buy a bag of organic FF and some Perlite and mix it a little thinner. You can start countless small pots with a bag of soil and get them out to a couple months even in a gallon if you have to, then your soil will be ready. Even Happy Frog needs some Perlite IMO. I have had some plants burn in Ocean Forest and in Happy Frog. I'm going to do a worm-bin too. I bought a near-wreck of a house and I work on it every day so it's one thing at a time restarting all the cool stuff. Like a killer outdoor vegetable garden which I also grow from seeds. I sprout 100+ seeds indoor using my same grow chambers and equipment. We'll have chickens and rabbits again within a year too. With rabbits you need to keep a full-size hay bale which you spread around the hutch & ground to make it nicer. They eat it and poop on it. It all goes into compost with household foods, coffee grounds, etc.,. Between the chickens and rabbits and hay we had a fifteen year-old, ten-foot long compost pile up to two feet high and four feet wide. I'd throw in a few additional bags of chicken manure every year for kicks. The pile had a beetle colony of inch-long, iridescent-green, flying beetles which bombarded the neighborhood every fall. They fly crazy and look like insane, giant, possibly stinging insects. It "freaks out the squares", in the words of Homer Simpson. Men ran. Women and kids screamed. There could be ten or fifteen swarming all over like giant angry bees. The larvae were man-thumb-sized after first appearing at pea-size, and burrowed in tunnels many feet underground below the compost pile into hard clay. I used to pull seven wheelbarrows a year out for my outdoor garden and virtually never turned it to avoid hurting the beetles. Them and the worms did the work. The chickens would fight over eating any larvae that turned up. It was organic. No fertilizer's. No sprays. And it turned the clay soil into usable soil. Sorry, i'm a blabbermouth. I use a keyboard. I write a lot. I've grown weed and vegetables 35+ years and raised three great kids. Hence the rabbits, chickens, dog, and countless small critters. We used to raise and release native frogs for instance. You think growing weed is tough? Try to figure out tree frogs from eggs to full-grown, loudly-croaking, nightly, neighborhood nuisances like you live next to a creek. We would save eggs from roadside puddles as Spring heated up the water, and release countless hundreds as frogs.
 
At what point do you start watering with coco and aloe and SST's? Do I water my seedlings with these or do I want until they are more established?
 
Bigdogfirecrotch said:
Should I plant my cover crop while my soil cooks? My bu's blend compost arrives on Monday, the last piece in the puzzle.
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If your soil is in your planters then go ahead and plant your cover crop (If you use endo mychorizae this is the time to sprinkle it down). If you're like me and let your soil mature in a rubbermaid container obviously planting a cc would do nothing for you, but I'm assuming you have soil in planters with how your question was phrased.


Bigdogfirecrotch said:
At what point do you start watering with coco and aloe and SST's? Do I water my seedlings with these or do I want until they are more established?
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I water my seedlings with aloe/coco/humic acid the very first time they need water (the humic acid is @ 1/8th tsp per gal) with no ill side effects. This may be my experience only but those plants that I do this to right off of the bat seem to put out a shit ton more lateral branching, for example I have a Haze hybrid from RareDankness that looks like a damn ornamental bush at a foot and a half tall and more than that wide after two months of veg under a 600 watt. But like I said, this is my experience and my experience only, your environment could yield completely different results.
Honestly I haven't been able to "hurt" any plants by going heavy (Triple to quad the actual ratios) with aloe or coco water, I've tried lol. My assumption is that after a certain point you simply can't saturate your medium with anymore of what we're chasing in both items or at least anything that would cause plant stress.
 
Bigdogfirecrotch said:
Thank you Midwest, I do have them in planters. Should I only water them once after mixing it or should I be watering the pots often?
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That depends on your environment and soil mix, if you have a relatively hot and dry grow area then you'll need to water them more. My advice would be to try and keep your soil humid, which means not soaking or dry. What I do when I let planters sit is I'll water them once upon "planting" the soil to get my soil to settle and obviously to make sure that it's fully saturated (not sopping, mind you). If the top dries out and the rest of the soil is obiously still very much wet, then I lightly spray the soil surface so my cc germinates. There aren't big plants in the planters to drink the water so it won't disapear that quickly. You won't hurt the soil a lot if they dry out too much but you'll loose some beneficial organisms if so.
 
Ok my cover crop is planted and my seeds are soaking in water, I have my 20 gal pots cooking in my veg tent because I haven't felt like setting up my flower tent yet...having some temp issues since it's in a basement and the temp has peaked at 57 with an oil filled space heater next to the room. I turned it up to full heat if that doesn't work I'll have to shift it into the room..I need to get the temps up before I put my seedlings in there...
 
Bigdogfirecrotch said:
Ok my cover crop is planted and my seeds are soaking in water, I have my 20 gal pots cooking in my veg tent because I haven't felt like setting up my flower tent yet...having some temp issues since it's in a basement and the temp has peaked at 57 with an oil filled space heater next to the room. I turned it up to full heat if that doesn't work I'll have to shift it into the room..I need to get the temps up before I put my seedlings in there...
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Room or tent?
 
Bigdogfirecrotch said:
Thanks I planned on doing no till, seems like that's the simplest way to go? Thank you for all the info...I'm heading off to lowes to try and source it myself. The only thing I'm having trouble finding is rice hulls but I could opt for an easier aeration material...
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Shoot for 40-45% aeration ! Not 25-33%!
That said, what're you leaning towards to use, aeration wise?
 
Bigdogfirecrotch said:
I went with the build a soil nutrient pack and their coconut and aloe powder and sourced everything else I need locally at the big box stores. Once this cooks can I start my seeds right in it or should I germinate it first and then put it in this soil?
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You can stage it or Simplify it, depending how clean and lean your mix is, that choice is up to you..
Most guys cut their starter mix with more perlite/humus but they start wit only 30% aeration or so..
The rev meanwhile suggests the exact same soil..from start to finish

Id say, If its guano free you might be good to go, rn.
maybe play it safe though, innoculate with a basic BSM Ewc tea and keep it warm and dark for a 2-3weeks if you can. Feel for steamy piles of microbes in the middle creating heat..your root killer right there. Gotta keep dem roots lil bit cool..
But I would test it out along the way. Might not need to waste time!
One seedling a week should notify you.

Also, Soma's book shows us we can do basically whatever works for us.. his cloning, never mind germinating, is done right in tray or tub of soil, with a lid to keep humidity up.

The more you air on the side of clean mixes, the more flexibility you'll have.
I would never consider mellowing for 6 weeks.
But a good 2 weeks can yield you some crazy mycelium which will booster your roots' reach big time..and the micro community .. See it as building a subway for your soil..
image.jpg
 
Bigdogfirecrotch said:
I went with rice hulls abs growstones at the reccomended 33%
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Nice
You should feed a lot of fungus then..
If you have any air material left you can add 12% more to all of it, or say, half of it
Making your mix more resistant to compaction
that would allow you to compare side by side during the first run

Or you can wait til after, or whenever, and add then, if u like
Could Do 1st run at 33%
2nd run at 40-45%

Either way, looking forward to it mang
 
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