Switching to organics from salt nutes in veg

FirstCavApache64

FirstCavApache64

Well-Known Member
I have some clones that I had to start in salt nutes as I didn't think dry amendments in tiny pots would do very well with heavy feeding clones. Now I'd really like to up pot them to bigger pots and was wondering if I can put them in organics amended with Dr. Earth and some Recharge to get them switched over to organics. I was going to flush the 1 gallon pots they are in to try and remove as much of the built up salt residue as possible and then transplant into a 5 gallon pot. I'm guessing it will be a bumpy transition but is it possible if I give them 4-6 weeks to adjust before I flip them? Strains are motorbreath 15 and pre 98 bubba kush and they're about 8 weeks old with 6 weeks in soil. Thanks for any advice you can offer.
 
The key is compost; the more active the better. Worm castings are essential for a long term sustainable soil and also the most overlooked amendment. Recharge is ok but just ok in the microbe dept…kinda like sea monkey microbes …just add water. You will need to keep adding recharge weekly or bi-weekly whereas fresh EWC will keep microbial activity high for much longer…albeit not forever. Not to say recharge is not good it’s just that natural compost is much better. Give aacts regularly especially when starting out with organic soil that hasn’t been recycled 100x yet. It gets better every time…
For sustaining plants long term in small pots add dry amendments along with vermicompost and base soil into a tote bin or similar vessel about a month before you actually need it. This “cooks” everything in by allowing the microbes to begin consuming whatever you added so when you finally add rooted plants there is plenty of NPK ready for absorption in the mix. This also helps normalize ph which typically drops a bit acidic until everything begins to decompose.
No need to flush or otherwise overwater your containers; just water normally as needed. Salt based nutes are water soluble & 6 weeks won’t be much of a build up unless you were like over feeding super heavy. If your soil mix is highly active there won’t be much of a transition at all just be sure to add at least 1/3 of your mix as compost.
One other thing that I suggest to do is use granular mycorrhizae in the hole at transplant and/or give a fungal tea to get fungi to dominate your containers. Just sprinkle it in the hole at place the root ball in direct contact to help with absorption and general health of your plants. This will prevent most ph lockout issues and assists with regulating moisture among many other benefits. Another suggestion is to add a dry fertilizer of your choice in the bottom layer of your pots so the roots grow down into it. It’s a good idea to keep something like liquid fish on hand in case they start to get pale. Chicken manure (Charlie’s compost brand) and Neptune’s harvest liquid fish w/seaweed are both staples in my grows.
 
Wow, thank you so much for the really carefully written out response. My last grow was my first run with any type of organics and it was just DTE dry amendments and water with molasses and epson salt as needed. They were autos and came out pretty well but I would love to find a source for EWC to add to the soil mix like you suggested. I just don't think Amazon is the place to get fresh EWC that will have the microbes I want. I might be wrong and just don't know the brand. I'll have to check out some of that liquid fish stuff, I did have an issue with one of my plants in flower going really pale. I hit it with a top dressing of bloom and epson salt and it seemed to get better but never quite as healthy as the other three. Chicken crap I have plenty of access to, one of the fine points of living in the boonies. I just need to make sure it's composted enough so I'll look that up. Thanks again for the helpful advice. I am going to use Roots Organics original as a base and have dry amendments mixed in. I'll use Great White in the hole when I transplant as a root stimulant and dust the rootball with it after I scar the rootball a little since it's rootbound so bad. I wish I could do a full supersoil mix and all that but right now this is as far I can take it.
 
Richard Drysift said:
The key is compost; the more active the better. Worm castings are essential for a long term sustainable soil and also the most overlooked amendment. Recharge is ok but just ok in the microbe dept…kinda like sea monkey microbes …just add water. You will need to keep adding recharge weekly or bi-weekly whereas fresh EWC will keep microbial activity high for much longer…albeit not forever. Not to say recharge is not good it’s just that natural compost is much better. Give aacts regularly especially when starting out with organic soil that hasn’t been recycled 100x yet. It gets better every time…
For sustaining plants long term in small pots add dry amendments along with vermicompost and base soil into a tote bin or similar vessel about a month before you actually need it. This “cooks” everything in by allowing the microbes to begin consuming whatever you added so when you finally add rooted plants there is plenty of NPK ready for absorption in the mix. This also helps normalize ph which typically drops a bit acidic until everything begins to decompose.
No need to flush or otherwise overwater your containers; just water normally as needed. Salt based nutes are water soluble & 6 weeks won’t be much of a build up unless you were like over feeding super heavy. If your soil mix is highly active there won’t be much of a transition at all just be sure to add at least 1/3 of your mix as compost.
One other thing that I suggest to do is use granular mycorrhizae in the hole at transplant and/or give a fungal tea to get fungi to dominate your containers. Just sprinkle it in the hole at place the root ball in direct contact to help with absorption and general health of your plants. This will prevent most ph lockout issues and assists with regulating moisture among many other benefits. Another suggestion is to add a dry fertilizer of your choice in the bottom layer of your pots so the roots grow down into it. It’s a good idea to keep something like liquid fish on hand in case they start to get pale. Chicken manure (Charlie’s compost brand) and Neptune’s harvest liquid fish w/seaweed are both staples in my grows.
Click to expand...
I draw the line when you start dissing my monkeys. Don't make me call The Wiz.

IMG_5624.JPG
 
FirstCavApache64 said:
Wow, thank you so much for the really carefully written out response. My last grow was my first run with any type of organics and it was just DTE dry amendments and water with molasses and epson salt as needed. They were autos and came out pretty well but I would love to find a source for EWC to add to the soil mix like you suggested. I just don't think Amazon is the place to get fresh EWC that will have the microbes I want. I might be wrong and just don't know the brand. I'll have to check out some of that liquid fish stuff, I did have an issue with one of my plants in flower going really pale. I hit it with a top dressing of bloom and epson salt and it seemed to get better but never quite as healthy as the other three. Chicken crap I have plenty of access to, one of the fine points of living in the boonies. I just need to make sure it's composted enough so I'll look that up. Thanks again for the helpful advice. I am going to use Roots Organics original as a base and have dry amendments mixed in. I'll use Great White in the hole when I transplant as a root stimulant and dust the rootball with it after I scar the rootball a little since it's rootbound so bad. I wish I could do a full supersoil mix and all that but right now this is as far I can take it.
Click to expand...
I'd give anything to live out in the boonies!!! There is wealth all around you! If your goal is to make a "living" substrate that needs only water to thrive, start composting and never stop. Make some LAB and IMO, keep the master cultures stored correctly and use these to inoculate everything!
 
McShnutz said:
I'd give anything to live out in the boonies!!! There is wealth all around you! If your goal is to make a "living" substrate that needs only water to thrive, start composting and never stop. Make some LAB and IMO, keep the master cultures stored correctly and use these to inoculate everything!
Click to expand...
I'd love to get to that stage. I'm trying to work my way up to that but I need to figure out how to make it work with my physical limitations. Composting and mixing my own soil are a little bit tough for me as I have some pretty serious nerve damage in my back and shoulder and I've been trying to come up with a system to do it smaller amounts to make it workable for me. I know I have tons of stuff like good leaf mold just lying all around and decomposing logs everywhere. I even have an old bed in the back yard that is nothing but decayed wood that's turned into soil like a Hugel bed. I'll have to look up LAB and see what it is. I've heard that the leaf litter has a ton of microbes and stuff that can be beneficial but my first outdoor crop had leaf septosis horribly so I was worried about bringing that into my indoor grow. I definitely have so much to learn. It's mostly just wanting to grow cleaner meds for my wife and I. Thanks so much for the advice.
 
FirstCavApache64 said:
Wow, thank you so much for the really carefully written out response. My last grow was my first run with any type of organics and it was just DTE dry amendments and water with molasses and epson salt as needed. They were autos and came out pretty well but I would love to find a source for EWC to add to the soil mix like you suggested. I just don't think Amazon is the place to get fresh EWC that will have the microbes I want. I might be wrong and just don't know the brand. I'll have to check out some of that liquid fish stuff, I did have an issue with one of my plants in flower going really pale. I hit it with a top dressing of bloom and epson salt and it seemed to get better but never quite as healthy as the other three. Chicken crap I have plenty of access to, one of the fine points of living in the boonies. I just need to make sure it's composted enough so I'll look that up. Thanks again for the helpful advice. I am going to use Roots Organics original as a base and have dry amendments mixed in. I'll use Great White in the hole when I transplant as a root stimulant and dust the rootball with it after I scar the rootball a little since it's rootbound so bad. I wish I could do a full supersoil mix and all that but right now this is as far I can take it.
Click to expand...
You are right the best ewc comes directly from a worm bin. Sure you can order bagged castings and they will work but the stuff I pull from my own worm bin is so much more active microbially than anything sitting on a shelf. Plus worm farms feed mostly shredded paper. My worms are fed veggie and fruit scraps, eggshells, green sand, etc. which makes for super dank vermicompost. You don’t have to start a compost or worm bin but it does make growing healthy plants much easier….almost effortless. Consider starting a worm bin or composter; best move you can make imo.
That being said there’s nothing wrong with the sea monkey microbes if that’s what you have. Got mad love for sea monkeys btw @PadawanWarrior..Just give recharge on the regular and train your tiny sea people to do the rest. My growmie got a chicken coop too but we found it takes a real long time in a pile outside for it to be viable as fertilizer…like almost a year. It’s not just poultry poop it’s also wood shavings used to line the floors and absorb the piss; really disgusting smell when swept out of the coop but no smell at all once decomposed.
Don’t worry about amending too much if you are starting out using a fresh bagged mix. When this run is done you can amend heavy and aquire some compost and let it cook to get to full super soil status. Great white should help cover you in the fungal domination dept. It takes a few recycles before your mix gets to a supernatural level of activity and then pretty much all you gotta do is water em.
 
I know it's kind of like the fast food version of organics but it's helping me get out mixing bottled nutes all the time and pouring out all the leftovers into the groundwater which I'm not a fan of. Also I'm getting a chance to learn while I'm smoking better product in my opinion. My last plants were noticibly healthier even though their tips were burned by being in small fabric pots that concentrated the nutes from drying out so quickly. I wrapped them in plastic wrap based on advice I got here and it helped but I'm going to 5 gallons this time and hopefully bigger next time so it will get better each grow. I want to start a worm bin but it's just not in the cards for now so the recharge twice a week for the first few weeks then once a week when they are fully rooted to the edge of the pot and the pot feels full. Thanks again for the help, all if you guys help so much. Organics can be awesome but much more science than I am used to.
 
So just an update, I transplanted one of the motorbreath 15's into a 5 gallon fabric pot with DTE 4-4-4 at 2 tbls per gallon and watered in Raw humic acid I had with recharge. It's been a week and the change is very noticeable. Tons of new healthy green growth and a much healthier overall condition to the plant. It was very root bound so probably a lockout of nutes from that but I'm super happy how it's up taking the nutes already and looking so happy. Thanks for the great advice everyone. Now I just need to do the two pre 98 bubba kush and let everyone recover so I can do some shaping and then flip them to flower.IMG_20220204_154757218.jpg
 
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