So who here is growing in true organic living soil?

B

brimck325

Well-Known Member
any of you guy's use stinging nettle? grows wild all over the country. i ferment a 5 gal. bucket full, strain and use in teas. lotta nitrogen and the plants seem to love it...peace
 
Rrog

Rrog

Well-Known Member
I know guys that root in fresh aloe with great success. Stinging Nettle is a bio-accumulator. Full of great stuff. Comfrey and dandelions as well.
 
st0wandgrow

st0wandgrow

Well-Known Member
Good shit Rrog! I have been interested in trying a super soil for quite a while now. I keep getting hung up on the time and space required to do it. Mixing soil, cooking it, having a vermiculture bin, etc seems like so much more of a pain in the balls than just mixing up your nute solution and pouring it in the container. Married, kids, self employed = very little spare time. I'm still on the fence.... but I would love to try it!
 
Rrog

Rrog

Well-Known Member
Stow. How can I help you? If I gave you soil and buckets would you give it a try? Have no fear.
 
S

Sampras1489

Active Member
Rrog, care to share your modified supersoil recipe? Also, am I understanding correctly that you only foliar feed the predatory neat odes? Or are they also in the soil mix?

sampras
 
st0wandgrow

st0wandgrow

Well-Known Member
Hmmm. I might take you up on that at some point. I use #5 buckets, so I would really only need a small amount of soil. I would be thrilled to take just 1 cutting in super soil and run that side by side with my other plants for a cycle and report back here on how it went. If it's substantially better, then I might be sold. I don't care about yield, I'm mainly after improving upon taste and potency. I'll let u know Rrog. Thanks for the offer!! :-)
 
Rrog

Rrog

Well-Known Member
Sampras, I amend the base soil and the super soil the same. Per bag of soil, I add:

1 Cup Kelp Flakes
2 cups shell meal
30 grams Neem meal
2 cups of charcoal. I use spent carbon from air scrubbers.
2-3 cups of my current, local, active soil, since it's full of locally dominant microbes and fully active. This will inoculate the soil while it cooks

I spray some home made LactoB, little molasses, BTI dunk water and nematodes on the leaves a couple times during veg. Once during early flower only. So these microbes are in the soil and on the leaves/ stems.

Stow, wait until after I get my MMJ card in a couple months so you don't have to worry. A 5 gallon pail with holes drilled is all you need. And water
 
NickNasty

NickNasty

Well-Known Member
Huel Perkins said:
Any of you organic guys have any scientific evidence that organic is better than inorganic? I'm not talking about pesticides or hormones either, just actual base nutrients.

I am personally anti-organic. The main reason I try to strictly use inorganic nutes is because I grow hydro and hate growing in soil. I've does all organic soil grows before and was really disappointed with the results, the growth was slow and the end result was much less flavorful compared to my hydro.

Just expressing my views here, please don't turn this thread into a nasty argument.
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Im all organic have been using reamended soil for the past 4 years. To answer your question about is organic better than inorganic the answer is it depends. When people say organic tastes better the real reason it tastes better is they are getting higher brix plants then they were with inorganic plants. But you can get high brix plants with inorganic ferts you just need to know what your doing.
Here are a couple links to high brix info.
http://www.highbrixgardens.com/what-is-brix.html
http://wewantorganicfood.com/2011/01/08/improving-food-quality-through-brix-testing/
Here is a high brix marijuana grow < there are also other grows where they are testing their brix on this site.
http://www.420magazine.com/forums/journals-progress/174878-doc-bud-true-high-brix.html

Anyways I just started getting into high brix so I am no authority on the subject but I have tested brix levels of different fruits and vegetables at my moms local farmers market versus store bought and in every single case the fruit/veg with the higher brix has tasted and looked better.
 
Rrog

Rrog

Well-Known Member
My opinion. When you really start to understand the complexities of soil and the microbial world, it's hard (for me) to see how anything but real living soil would produce the best bud. Again, my opinion. I didn't start this thread to throw organics in the face of hydro dudes. That's a never-ending pissing contest that would reduce the goodness of any thread to compost fast.
 
st0wandgrow

st0wandgrow

Well-Known Member
NickNasty said:
Im all organic have been using reamended soil for the past 4 years. To answer your question about is organic better than inorganic the answer is it depends. When people say organic tastes better the real reason it tastes better is they are getting higher brix plants then they were with inorganic plants. But you can get high brix plants with inorganic ferts you just need to know what your doing.
Here are a couple links to high brix info.
http://www.highbrixgardens.com/what-is-brix.html
http://wewantorganicfood.com/2011/01/08/improving-food-quality-through-brix-testing/
Here is a high brix marijuana grow < there are also other grows where they are testing their brix on this site.
http://www.420magazine.com/forums/journals-progress/174878-doc-bud-true-high-brix.html

Anyways I just started getting into high brix so I am no authority on the subject but I have tested brix levels of different fruits and vegetables at my moms local farmers market versus store bought and in every single case the fruit/veg with the higher brix has tasted and looked better.
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Wow Nick! Very informative links you just posted there. Thanks for sharing ..... I'd honestly never heard of brix before.
 
H

hic

Well-Known Member
I am not a strait organic farmer although I try to keep it as organic as I can. I usually just feed with fish emulsion and bat guano. I do admit there is usually 2 or 3 times during a grow I use non organic just to keep shit from building up on me in the soil. It is no secret that it takes organics based fertilizers a lot longer to get outta soil and or wash out you might say. I find that if I do not use a non-organic based anywhere threw the grow I will get a build up of some sort.

I know this can be remedied organically yet I aint going threw $200 in products to achieve what a 5$ ordeal can fix. I aint looking to argue just putting it in there to share heck Fucking Ax2 good thread.

Any pointers to help keep it more organic?
 
Rrog

Rrog

Well-Known Member
You can get a groovy little Brix meter and have a go at measuring it with your MJ. It's a simple little handheld thing you look through with a drop of MJ Juice on the end.

Brix is often associated with a sugar content, but that's a bit misleading. Brix is a rough measurement of the total dissolved solids, which includes sugars. Higher Brix is associated with more nutrients and flavor.

Hello Hic! So you're saying that with soil you're getting a build-up? I just build the soil initially and then it's just water after that. If I'm recycling the soil like Spanky (NickNasty) wisely does, then I'm amending as I go with compost and EWC (EarthWorm Castings). Some fish meal and Alphalfa (right Spanky?) for added N.
 
postedup610

postedup610

Well-Known Member
How many people make their own EWC? I just got into it about 6 months ago, and I've just started using my own.
 
postedup610

postedup610

Well-Known Member
Rrog said:
No nastiness from me. I grew chem hydro for a few grows 5 years ago. Once I saw that I could inoculate my res with beneficial microbes to keep it clean, I became turned on to the power of microbes. Then did a 1/2 "soil" 1/2 fert routine, then on to full soil and never looked back. The microbes can keep pests and disease away. Chem ferts require as sterile an environment as possible, and that sets you up for pests and disease. Same as with people.

One thing to maybe note, there are good and bad microbes. Bad microbes are characterized as being fast to populate an area if they can, but they're weak. Good microbes are characterized as slow, but strong. Also keep in mind that these microbes, millions upon millions, are in the air at all times. You breathe in tens of thousands of fungal spores, bacteria of all sorts, yeasts, etc with every breath you take.

In a temporarily sterile environment, the first microbes that will try and populate are the faster bad microbes. Their speed is their advantage. In a normal environment, good microbes have set up camp like guard dogs and when bad microbes come along they are pounded, as microbes can be territorial to protect the plant.

As I said, I haven't had a nute deficiency or a pest in 1.5 years thanks to the microbes.

Also, soil is cheaper if you recycle and amend with a little compost (could be bagged) and worm castings.
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My 36 site EBB & Flow sits out in the garage collecting dust. I know that I will never use it again, but its funny how I started in soil, non organic initially. Then moved along to hydroponics, had good yields, but wasnt really satisfied with the quality. I know people might say it was the user, but I still am not convinced it was me. I had no nute burn on harvest day, and the plants had healthy root development, but still the quality wasn't anything but sub par.

Read up on organics, and started by just incorporating EWC into soil and applying teas, and I too refuse to go back to any method I tried previously.

Anyone using herbs like comfrey or dandelions? I'm sure a lot are using sea kelp and alfalfa meal.


I can
 
Rrog

Rrog

Well-Known Member
A lot of guys dig Hydro and I respect that a lot. Absolutely. To each his own. I like Judo and others like Karate.

Posted, Two things I want after I move into new digs next year. An ACT brewer and a worm bin. You can't beat an occasional dose of ACT. In soil or foliar.

Here's the recipe from the smartest mind I'm aware of on this matter, Microbeman.

3 Tablespoons compost. Fresher is the key for the initial microbe dose. Could do EWC here also.
&#8232;1/2 gallon water&#8232;
1 Tablespoon molasses
1/4 tsp fish Hydrolysate
1 tsp kelp meal
1/4 tsp rock phosphate

Yarrow, Camomile, Dandelion, Stinging Nettle, Aloe, and Comfrey are all crazy good as a fermented plant extract. And making that is rediculously easy.

Comfrey and nettle at least are also great if juiced / soaked quickly and applied as a foliar right away. The secondary metabolites degrade very quickly (15 min) and are really excellent for immune system response.
 
Rrog

Rrog

Well-Known Member
Posted, have you checked out Teaming With Microbes? Short little book and the second half is not pertinent to MJ. So not a long read, but what a great read on the goings on in living soil. Gives you a real respect for soil and the pounds and pounds of microbes in a healthy 5 gallon pail of soil.

Have you been to the Organic Soil forum here on RIU? There are two, really because you'll want to see Subcool's Old School forum. Check out a stickie regarding Mainlining. Brother Nugs is using a modified SuperSoil recipe with Vermifire soil. He brews ACT also.
 
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