Building soil from scratch and on the cheap!

[COorganics]

Morning everyone,
This morning I added a bunch of fan leaves to the cooking mix. Worm farm is full, all trays. So what the heck.
Also decided to keep it in the big cloth pot with a tarp on top, way easier to turn it over then if I keep it in the trash bins.

12 days in.

 

[Smelly Joe]

Ahoya

I don't really know what else to add , but a while back a buddy and me went to pick up some bamboo from the beach, chopped it up and worked it into the raised beds.

I try to add some Volcanic Rock Dust, Gypsum and basically as much variety of organic products as possible. I see it as giving the plants a boufet all day long. LoL.

I am sub'd to this thread as well.

Love and Light

Smelly

 

[COorganics]

Nice. Glad ur along. Yeah volcanic rock dust and gypsum are both on my wish list. Seems both are gnarly amendments.

The Yum Yum stuff that PeeJay uses also looks like a pretty awesome and nearly complete organic amendment blend. Honestly using something like that would probably be better because of the optimized ratios of minerals and meals in it.

It makes me wonder here really how important exact optimum ratios really are in a soil mix. As long as mix isn't Short on anything, and it is cooked, I believe I can grow some serious organic produce in the soil. I know some would be quick to say that the best soil is lab tested and amended per lab recommended broadcast. I don't know really. I do love the idea of saving money right now and doing my best with what I have available.

 

[Conradino23]

You're not gonna beat lab testing on budget, but you can come close by knowing what you're putting in the mix.

 

[COorganics]

So now that the mix is in the big cloth pot cooking it is drying out. I try to only use rainwater for my gardening projects. I guess I will have to go buy some water from the grocery store. Since we haven't had any rainfall in a good while up here I broke down and used tap water for my outdoor veggies. I bought some water (jugs of RO) for my indoor cannabis.

Now, my tap water isn't hard water by any means. It PPM's between 80-90.
I tried to research what they put in my water and it was kinda difficult. The municipal water source is drawn from a mountain river. I found no mention of chloramines, only chlorine.

Even if the water were treated with chloramine, I wonder how terrible would it really be for the benificial micro organisms? This is where I get really confused. 80 PPM total dissolved solids. Of that how much could be chlorine/chloramine? We are talking parts per MILLION here, is that really gonna do a microherd genocide? Hard to believe and it would be much easier to use the tap.

Am I trying to talk myself into something dumb here, or is collecting rainwater dumb when my tap water would be safe to use?

 

[Conradino23]

Leave tap water for 24-48 hours and this chlorine will evaporate eventually.

 

[COorganics]

I know how to do that, I have an air stone and a big trash tub I brew compost teas in. I also know chloramine won't just gas off like chlorine.

Conradino man, do you think using only rainwater is necessary in my case? Given the info above?

Like is it gonna damage what I have going for me in the way of a healthy, living soil?

 

[Conradino23]

To be completely honest I don't know what chloramine does to yr water or yr plants as we don't have it here I'm positive. Then, I heard a lot of weird stories about what they put in the water in USA, like prozac or ritalin. But I don't know if it's true

 

[David Bowman]

To be completely honest I don't know what chloramine does to yr water or yr plants as we don't have it here I'm positive. Then, I heard a lot of weird stories about what they put in the water in USA, like prozac or ritalin. But I don't know if it's true

That last part is due to people dumping old prescription meds into the toilet/water system. The water treatment plants are not designed to remove these chemicals so they can build up over time. A recent study showed that it would take years for anyone to get a typical dose of any of these medications simply from drinking the water which contains them.

 

[CascadianDank]

This is something else Ive been thinking about due to the high cost of the Super Soil I currently use.

I was talking to Docbud about reusing my Super Soil because he had done it in the past before coming up with his kit. here is a reply I got from him:

It's not hard to improve the soil! You can start by adding Soft Rock Phosphate. This all by itself will help your grow tremendously. The 6-5-3 powders I've been recommending are 80% there as far as brix goes. The trouble comes with the soils we use....usually too high in sodium and potassium. If all you did was amend soil with a good micro source, like Azomite, and a source of calcium, like SRP, Gypsum and high Ca Limestone.....you're pretty much there as long as you have good microbes in the soil (ProMix comes already fortified with beneficials) and you don't fee the wrong stuff.

Seriously, rock powders, micro's, a good tea, and low NPK fishy ferts, or chicken manure will do the job! It just won't do it quite as well as what I'm doing----I hope.

I didnt write down what he said and went looking for High Calcium SRP. Nobody knew what I was talking about so I came home and looked it up to get a brand name or something to go back with. I came up with Calphos

Canton Mills

Calphos

I saw you added the SRP but thought I would toss that out there for future reference or for anyone else thinking of trying this.

Something else I wanted to add since you asked about Peatmoss ratio is, I was recently looking for a just add water soil recipe for my veggies and came across Square Foot Gardening. The soil mix is 1/3 Peatmoss 1/3 Perlite and 1/3 Compost. The 1/3 Compost is suggested to be an assortment of different Composts such as EWC, Mushroom Compost, Composted Chicken and Steer Manures. My veggies are pretty happy in this mix except I lost both Cucumber Plants I planted. Not sure its due to the mix though since everything else looks great.

 

[COorganics]

Good share! Thanks cascadiandank.
I'm glad u checked out my threads, I thought they would be right up your alley.

My sister in law does the square foot gardening, her and I were just talking about that the other day.

This soil mix I'm making is no where near perfect I know that. It is helping me out though, just thinking about it and what to put in it, and why.

I will have to get some gypsum and food grade limestone. I think it would be silly to not incorporate the 6-5-3. If not this batch, ill be mixing it into the next for sure.

As far as my tap water goes I'm still not going to use it for the cannabis. I am on the fence still. What I need is a microscope to inspect the microbes and pour some tap water on them and see what happens. No cash for that though.

 

[CascadianDank]

Something you could try that wouldnt cost much is bubble a gallon or 2 of your tap water for a day or so and make a small batch of tea with that. If your results match what you normally get then your tap water would be fine to use on your plants.

 

[COorganics]

Brilliant! That should show me. It actually looks like we are gonna get some rain and I was getting ready to brew tea with some rain water. (If it actually rains). Ill do two identical batches. And document here.

+ reps for an idea that will really help!

Edit: guess I gotta dig up a second air stone. I do think I have one.

 

[Conradino23]

Just chiming in about super soil vs. Doc Bud's kit. I never used neither, but if I use potting mix I prepare two separate ones for veg and flowering. The latter one is only used for plants which hasn't been outplanted straight in the soil. Super Soil can be a little too unbalanced as I understand it and be too rich for indoor growing. Doc Bud does lab testing on the other hand and it's really hard to beat that as that's what pros do. He says that potassium causes main problem in homemade mixes usually and the same applies to Super Soil as I understand. Then, it really depends what you use. I don't use any commercial soil for example, and basis for my mixes is always compost so rich in nitrogen that my plants sometimes do not get yellow at all. But I was putting potassium anyway in form of wood ash and never had any problems. Didn't measure brix though, maybe next season. The thing is that you need plenty of potassium for vegetables and I guarantee that as I'm an ardent gardener. It influences number of flowers, size of fruits/vegetables, and their taste! That might be different with cannabis though, but then I never had any problem with taste of my plants. My concern has been mainly about binding nitrogen during flowering, and this season I added more carbon like flower petals and shredded leaves to the mix in order to force plants to suck it from the leaves while in the same time promoting phosphorus and potassium uptake, and it worked definitely. But then this really depends on temps, humidity and microbial activity which is high in my grows. Then, I'm an outdoor grower and indoor rules hardly apply to what happens with my plants. As far as water is concerned I dropped filtered water as I started seeing what I thought was mild calcium deficiency and replaced it with water from my nearest stream. Can't you just get your water from the nearest river, man?

 

[COorganics]

That is a thought I had last year. Getting water from a stream. The problem is huge swings in mineral content with runoff. Runoff in the Rockies is a huge deal and water flows get insanely high. I want water that is pure or damn near, consistently all the time, for consistent results all the time. Rain/RO has been working for me, although a pain.

Maybe ill go to an alpine lake with my ppm meter just for the heck of it and sample some lake water.

 

[CascadianDank]

Just chiming in about super soil vs. Doc Bud's kit. I never used neither, but if I use potting mix I prepare two separate ones for veg and flowering. The latter one is only used for plants which hasn't been outplanted straight in the soil. Super Soil can be a little too unbalanced as I understand it and be too rich for indoor growing. Doc Bud does lab testing on the other hand and it's really hard to beat that as that's what pros do. He says that potassium causes main problem in homemade mixes usually and the same applies to Super Soil as I understand. Then, it really depends what you use. I don't use any commercial soil for example, and basis for my mixes is always compost so rich in nitrogen that my plants sometimes do not get yellow at all. But I was putting potassium anyway in form of wood ash and never had any problems. Didn't measure brix though, maybe next season. The thing is that you need plenty of potassium for vegetables and I guarantee that as I'm an ardent gardener. It influences number of flowers, size of fruits/vegetables, and their taste! That might be different with cannabis though, but then I never had any problem with taste of my plants. My concern has been mainly about binding nitrogen during flowering, and this season I added more carbon like flower petals and shredded leaves to the mix in order to force plants to suck it from the leaves while in the same time promoting phosphorus and potassium uptake, and it worked definitely. But then this really depends on temps, humidity and microbial activity which is high in my grows. Then, I'm an outdoor grower and indoor rules hardly apply to what happens with my plants. As far as water is concerned I dropped filtered water as I started seeing what I thought was mild calcium deficiency and replaced it with water from my nearest stream. Can't you just get your water from the nearest river, man?

The only issue I had with the Super Soil is a Mag def. which I cleared up by adding a shot glass worth of Dolomite Lime per gallon of soil.
I havent tried Docs kit either and probably wont just because Im happy with the results I get now and I have 300 +/- Gallons of soil at the moment and see no reason to start over. Being that I have so much now I will be using it as a base for future grows and amend it as needed using compost and other amendments that are already part of the recipe. Eventually getting away from bagged soils and just using the soil from my yard and my own compost along with the amendments Im already using is the goal.

 

[labexperiment]

I am a fan of collecting rainwater, I have 3-250 gallon totes and 3-55 gallon drums that I store rainwater in for my outdoor garden, all food grade plastic. I got them for free and I bet you can too, then I rigged up a collection system running off my eaves troughs from the garage. Check the online used or free section of classified ads, that is where I found my drums. Good luck.

 

[COorganics]

So the tap water/tea brewing experiment is on. Didn't get any rain yesterday unfortunately. I did a 1X batch of my tea using water straight from the tap. Didn't bubble first to remove chlorine. I am suspecting that my tap water is good to go at <80 PPM. We will see. I'm looking for a specific foamy look that I'm used to seeing when I brew this exact tea recipe. That will be a sign of a massive spawning of Microlife in the tea, and let me know shits all good. Thanks again cascadiandank for the good idea.

Also, I was considering whether this thread was the best place to do this experiment or not and concluded:
This thread is about building soil. To build soil one must cook the mix, which requires microbes, which require non toxic water. And tea is what I use to jump start the cooking process. So yeah here seems good.

I've already been using the tap water on my outdoor veggies and they are thriving. I'm hoping to get some evidence that supports my theory that my tap water won't do any harm to my living soil environment and critters.

Looks like rain may happen today, and as always, I'm set up to harvest some. Then I can make identical tea with rainwater as a control.

 

[COorganics]

Here is the tea recipe (copied from my journal)
This is the Rev's all purpose tea, as shown in the book. I use a little less FF big bloom is the only difference.

A.P. tea
Day one:
Teaspoon unsulphured molasses
Teaspoon kelp meal
Teaspoon high N bat guano
Tablespoon organicare pure
Bubble 24 hrs (RO 1 gal H2O)
Day 2 ingredients:
Tablespoon FF big bloom
Teaspoon fish ferts
10 drops CaMg+
1 cup FRESH EWC


Bubble additional 24 hrs and strain through a loose strainer, dilute with 1 gal RO H2O per gal tea.
Use immediately and stir while pouring to keep things mixed up and even.

(Doesn't say use your tap water, lol, but lets see what happens)

 

[COorganics]

Day 2 ingredients are going in. Ill be camping out on the lake but I will swing thru tomorrow or the next morn to check the tea.
If its not good, ill start bubbling some tap water for a couple day and try again and see if that works. I'm attempting this with straight out my tap H2O 1st because if it works it is easiest.