Integrum Stultus
New Member
Is said Seed Bank a sponsor?
Try Bonza, they have one hell of an offer available till 12 noon tomorrow
Try Bonza, they have one hell of an offer available till 12 noon tomorrow
To Fox Farm Ocean Forest or not to Fox Farm Ocean Forest
- Thread starter
- #42
Is said Seed Bank a sponsor?
Try Bonza, they have one hell of an offer available till 12 noon tomorrow
Honestly, I've never scrolled through the whole list of sponsors but I would guess probably not.
Integrum Stultus
New Member
I placed an order on 2 May and today the tracking information states that they have made it through customs already.
Ive mentioned names of products Ive Purchased, and asked questions as well
If ya get yer hand slapped, I guess ya know not To.. But Id ask
But thats me... Im Rebel without a cause
PS.
Ive seen some other Star Wars Day sales... just an FYI
If ya get yer hand slapped, I guess ya know not To.. But Id ask
But thats me... Im Rebel without a cause
PS.
Ive seen some other Star Wars Day sales... just an FYI
- Thread starter
- #45
I have not looked at the shipping cost but the prices are pretty good.
Integrum Stultus
New Member
Exactly..
Do they take CC's
Integrum Stultus
New Member
Yes,
But you have to have cross border transactions unlocked.
But you have to have cross border transactions unlocked.
alantesla33
New Member
Pretty sure you can speak your mind if a product is bad them thanks for sharing!
Integrum Stultus
New Member
Shipping for that deal was $11.60 for me.
By "recently," do you mean 2011, lol? That's about when I got bugs from some I bought (and I remember reading a lot of others' reports here). <SHRUGS> It happens from time to time. I don't think those bags are exactly airtight. Just one of the little joys of dealing with "living products." Sometimes, you get a little bonus life
.I would say, rather, that it is just something to be aware of. You should examine ANY soil or related product before using it. If a bug cannot live in it, your plants probably can't either, lol, so there's always going to be a possibility.
It certainly ranks above "nothing." Beats those "soil test" probes that are supposed to be 3-in-1 moisture/light/pH meters, too, IMHO. Of course... If you're severely color-challenged like me, they can be just about useless. But if your eyes have functioning color discriminators, that kind of test kit will help.
A digital meter will be more accurate and easier to use - and, because of the latter, will probably get used more often. You can get a Milwaukee pH600 for $15 to $25. Basic digital meter. Displays to one decimal place (5.8 instead of 5.83), is accurate (IIRC) to ±.1, which, while not perfect, is "enough." It doesn't have ATC (automatic temperature compensation), so you can get scientific and check the temperature of your solution & do the calculation - or look it up on a chart - or just understand that your reading will be ever so slightly off if you're not testing solution that's at 70°F. Calibration is done manually and is single-point. IOW, you rinse the probe, shake it dry, and set it in a container of pH 7.0 solution, wait for the reading to stabilize, and use a little screwdriver (included) to turn a screw until the readout displays 7.0. Probably best if you dip it into an additional container of pH 7.0 (and shake it off again) just before sticking it into the container of pH 7.0 that you're using to calibrate, to ensure that there has been no cross-contamination with your rinse water. This pH meter is "disposable," meaning that the probe is not replaceable. But it will last for a while if treated correctly (NEVER store the probe dry, store in the correct thing (distilled water will actually leach material out of the probe over time, use storage solution or pH 4.01), check it regularly against a known thing (like your various pH solutions, storage solution, etc.) and recalibrate when needed, et cetera). IDK how much those test strip kits cost, but this particular digital meter makes them seem like much less of a bargain, regardless.
Have more to spend, lol? A Milwaukee pH56 will cost between $48 and $70 depending on how much effort you want to expend in searching for deals. User-replaceable probe. ATC (automatic temperature compensation). Temperature display (is my nutrient solution too hot or cold?). Displays to two decimal places (pH 5.83). Accuracy is ±.05. (Semi-)Automatic two-point calibration - initiate calibration, dip into pH 7.0, then when instructed dip into either 4.01 or 10.0 (for our purposes, use the 4.01). Waterproof and floats, which can be handy if you're testing the solution in a 55-gallon drum, drop it and don't have 54" long arms, lol. Or if you just don't want to worry about accidentally ruining it by dropping it.
BtW, you can make your own storage solution, but it's easier just to order it.
I usually use 25%, more or less, by volume. That's mostly because it's easy to measure at that rate - one container of perlite to three containers of soil. I'm not being scientific, just lazy
. But too much more and I end up watering the floor as well as my plants, too much less and I see less drainage ability and more soil compaction over time than I'd like.Are you thinking of baking soda?
Anyway... Stuff like that can be somewhat temporary in nature (IOW, you might find a substance that will change the pH and then discover the next day that it has crept back), and adds nothing of nutritional value. Vinegar is just acetic acid (CH₃COOH), along with water and trace chemicals (flavorings, colorings, etc.). Why not use a commercial product? For example, General Hydroponics' pH Down uses food grade phosphoric acid... Phosphorous is the "P" in NPK, lol. And, as they say, "a little dab will do ya," so even a small bottle will probably last you a few grows (or a few years).
Also, if one is feeding with "organics," the plants cannot directly uptake the nutrients at all. It gets consumed by the microbial life, which in turn... err... defecates nutrients which are in a form that your plants' roots can access. Which is all fine and dandy. But it's something to be aware of; you don't just need to keep your plants healthy, you need to keep the microbial life in the soil happy. That has traditionally been somewhat more difficult in a container than when growing directly in the ground. Doable, certainly. It just needs a different mindset (IOW, don't kill the microbial life, lol, because there's no way for more to colonize a pot of soil without human intervention).
That seems more likely to happen with Ocean Forrest than with Happy Frog; I'd think that the former would have more nitrogen in it than the latter (aka "hotter soil"). More nitrogen during the, err, "formative years" (second through fourth or fifth week of growth) has been shown to encourage more males in a population of plants. Dutch Passion published an article about the male:female ratio and how to encourage a greater percentage of females some years back and it has been reposted all over the place since. I could probably dig up a link here if anyone is interested. Off the top of my head, I remember temperature, nitrogen vs. phosphorous, and the color of one's lighting.
No, it doesn't spoil, lol. And on the subject of favoring larger bags... "I f*cking reckon," LMAO. I went to a local nursery where I have bought 2 cubic foot bags in the past for around $18.50 each. They didn't have any this year, but they sure had lots of "Suzie Homemaker"
(she's the one who has nothing in her tool box but a hammer, one screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and one of those adjustable wrenches you only pick up when you want every knuckle to bleed profusely :rolleyes3) sized bags for like FIFTEEN DOLLARS EACH. I think they were 12-quart bags. Hmm... Takes like five 12-quart bags to make two cubic feet. Yeah, I'll pass. And <BLEEP> you very much for pushing those little bags on people as if you were ChinaMart instead of a commercial nursery (FFS!). So I went up the road to another place. I hardly ever go there because its out of the way and a little expensive. I asked the lady if she had any two cubic foot bags of perlite. She said no, and I had just turned to leave when she said, "We didn't get any this year, all we have are four cubic foot bags." So I bought one - for $25.
IDK how much actual knowledge I shared, but thanks for giving me an excuse to ramble....
Cowpert909
New Member
Love all Fox Farms products. They have really helped me a lot with their support as well. Some people mix the soil. Fox Farms does not recommend it and I have noticed the plants I have just used Ocean Forest have completely gone nuts. They are HUGE! I have to enlarge my flower room now. But I mix it a little. Get a topping. Growstone gnat nix or sand. If I see a bug in my veg room, I give a small shot of natural insect killer and close the door. I have a few fans blowing the top soil dry. That prevents those fungus gnats from coming around. Since I have been doing that the two or three gnats that were there are gone. Haven't seen any. I haven't had a problem with FF soil. Just when I overwater. I would buy a bag of Ocean Forest and Happy Frog to compare. I put a little Lucky dog on the bottom. Then I mix Happy and Ocean. Next time I am going to go exclusively Ocean because the plants I put in that have gone nuts! I also love the FF Grow big etc. nutrient 3. The sledgehammer wash, and bud nutrients. Open sesame, cha ching, and beastie bloom, for when they are in bloom.
- Thread starter
- #53
I have given it a lot of thought. The price of the Fox Farm is pretty darn high. So I made my own soil with some peat moss, perlite, sand, compost, and rabbit poop. I dried the rabbit nuggets and crushed them into powder which I then thoroughly mixed in with the other ingredients. I went with a ratio of 35% peat moss, 35% coarse perlite, 15% sand, and 15% compost. The rabbit poo I didn't factor in but is probably the most important ingredient. I used about 1 cup of the rabbit dust, 1 cup of bone meal, and 1/2 cup of blood meal and mixed them very well.
Cowpert909
New Member
Fox Farms has spent years and thousands of dollars learning what works, developing their soil and nutrients. Adding all the stuff you would have to buy separately, earthworm castings, bat guano, and sea-going fish and crab meal and how do you mix it. Plus, they start off with that killer Humbolt County soil.
Aged forest products, sandy loam, and sphagnum peat moss give Ocean Forest its light, aerated texture.
So, seriously, my ace sells ocean forest for eleven bucks a bag. It's worth it to me and my plants went from O.K. to. Crap Now I have to build a bigger flower room. My girls have literally gone nuts. I am so glad I invested in the Open sesame, Beasty Bloom and Cha Ching. Thirty eight bucks for 6 oz of all three. Those are flowering nutrients that will triple my bud size. The people at FF are always easy to reach for support as well. But, my brother good luck to you. You go it on your own and let me know how that works out for you.
Aged forest products, sandy loam, and sphagnum peat moss give Ocean Forest its light, aerated texture.
So, seriously, my ace sells ocean forest for eleven bucks a bag. It's worth it to me and my plants went from O.K. to. Crap Now I have to build a bigger flower room. My girls have literally gone nuts. I am so glad I invested in the Open sesame, Beasty Bloom and Cha Ching. Thirty eight bucks for 6 oz of all three. Those are flowering nutrients that will triple my bud size. The people at FF are always easy to reach for support as well. But, my brother good luck to you. You go it on your own and let me know how that works out for you.
I use Ocean Forrest and Happy Frog. I don't really care for peat-based soils, and the Ocean Forrest is hotter than I'd like (I tend to have sativas and/or sativa-dominant hybrids in my garden, so I don't like to see "OMG" levels of readily available nitrogen right out of the bag). OtOH, Fox Farm's soil products are okay. Not perfect, but no soil will be, IMHO; different strains have different nutritional, watering, etc. requirements so there is no one size fits all soil. Fox Farm soil products is more like a one size fits many.
I'm a little lazy, lol. If mixing my own soil was substantially cheaper than buying it, I probably would. I already add lots of perlite (but it's, IDK, ~$6 per cubic foot - so I'm actually making my soil cheaper ).
I sort of get the feeling that Fox Farm soil products are not pH stable over the long term (meaning five+ months of use). I could be wrong; it's just a feeling.
I'm a little lazy, lol. If mixing my own soil was substantially cheaper than buying it, I probably would. I already add lots of perlite (but it's, IDK, ~$6 per cubic foot - so I'm actually making my soil cheaper
).I sort of get the feeling that Fox Farm soil products are not pH stable over the long term (meaning five+ months of use). I could be wrong; it's just a feeling.
- Thread starter
- #56
A very wise man and seasoned cannabis grower told me recently to K.I.S.S. He said for thousands of years pot seeds would fall from the plant, put down roots, and grow just fine without any human intervention. All the designer soils, nutrients and solutions are all designed to increase yield no? I want to see what happens with a good, inexpensive soil and water that is PH balanced out in the sun can produce. Might not be mega sized buds, but I'll bet the buds produced will be mighty tasty.
Sure. Women have been squatting in the fields and dropping their squallers for tens of thousands of years, too, and people grow just fine without all that fancy modern 16th century (lol) talk about having your kids in a birthing room somewhere. It works.
<SHRUGS> Of course it works, lol. The whole point in a species is to produce another generation. That's hardly an earthshaking accomplishment when you think about it. A woman and the person she mates with only have to manage to get two children to breeding age to further the status quo - a third would be a bonus, signifying a growth of the population. Have 15 to 20 children, the odds aren't bad that a couple will make it. A fertilized cannabis plant can produce thousands of seeds... the fact that some make it isn't really evidence that any given way is the best.
Your buddy could have, I suppose, just as easily said, "Every year, thousands of cannabis seeds are produced by each of millions of fertilized cannabis plants in the wild. The fact that the entire planet isn't overrun by now clearly shows that this is being done in a sub-optimum way," lol.
Homo sapiens has been growing food for a long time. For some thousands of years. We have become more efficient at doing so, have learned (more or less) that taking care to keep the ground healthy is more than just a minor aid to production, et cetera. There are still people that farm the "old-fashioned way." They don't seem to be getting fat doing so, though. Tend to move around a bit, each time that they basically ruin an area for food production.
Well, in truth, they're all designed to make the designer money, lol (assuming that you are speaking of commercially available designer soils, nutrients, and solutions). As a secondary purpose, many of them can help produce more - or healthier - yield, depending on circumstances of course. And for every $100 a company makes, it probably spends a dollar on improving its products (or 99¢ on marketing and a penny on product improvement :rolleyes3 ) .
As has been mentioned many times in many threads, individuals can do the same thing vis-Ã -vis building their own soil. The basics have been known for years. As far as that goes, the individual can, in theory, do it much better. You can buy a "one size fits most" soil like Ocean Forrest, use it for those heavy feeders and adjust it slightly so it doesn't stun(t) the light-feeding sativas and other strains that evolved to live in less than stellar conditions (or just turn a blind eye, knowing that they'll "pull through," albeit being less than they could have been). But the individual can also formulate es soil to match the conditions that favor that particular strain, giving just enough nutrients for full health without toxicity or nutrient build-up in the soil. You're not going to get that, retail, lol. You might find that a company offers A/B/C choices - which is definitely an improvement over, "You want soil? Here IT is," of course - but even that fails to approach what a gardener with some knowledge and the ability to read es plants is capable of mixing.
I guess it's like going fast. Speed costs - how fast do YOU want to go? If you have 1,000 watts of HID (or decent quality LED) light, "good enough" might get you 600-750 grams. I'd be willing to guess that the ones getting 2.2 pounds (a kilogram) or even more... aren't settling for "good enough." (Okay, they're also not growing pure sativas, but stay with me here, lol...).
Match the strain to the environmental conditions and you should be capable of getting a harvest. BtW, IDK what soil is both good AND inexpensive.
If the soil is heavy, add something for drainage. If you're not going to be feeding your plants, make sure the soil has nutrients in it (and, perhaps, an additional source that will provide more nutrients as/when it decomposes). In terms of "pH-balanced," make sure to add enough of the right thing so that your pH doesn't shift too much over time as the plant consumes nutrients (and excretes waste products into the soil) if you want the plant's health to continue until harvest. Worm castings are usually good, too. And you might want to add something to the soil that will discourage insect infestations - unless you are looking for a new hobby
. Along those lines, spreading a layer of diatomaceous earth on top of the soil will kill many insects that crawl over it. Ohwaitaminute, lol, that'd be custom mixing your soil. Do you mean just open a bag, dump the soil into a container, stick a plant in it, and water once in a while, and see what you end up with?
Speaking of watering once in a while... (<OOPS!>) Knew there was something I forgot. I miss growing DWC. Always knew exactly when I needed to "water" with that - the pumps would change from "hum" to "HUM rattleRATTLErattle HUM" :LOL:
I'm just rambling. Guess what I was trying to say was that there's a world - or maybe a galaxy? - of difference between good enough and great. And I've heard of people selling $20 grams (FFS!!!), so it's not like any improvement won't pay for itself several times over; even the personal grower would have to "buy the difference" between a great harvest and one that is merely good enough, to make up for the shortfall in bud. So I guess - in the main, at least - it all comes down to how lazy the grower is. Me, I'm pretty lazy. When growing in soil, I buy a commercial product and don't do a whole lot to it. I used to know a guy that was pretty much the opposite. He said you had to grow the same strain three times before you had a good general idea about what was best in terms of environmental conditions, and another three to five times to dial it in. IIRC, he'd grown less than two dozen strains - in 45 years of growing cannabis.
BtW, your bud should always be tasty, regardless of how you grow it. Unless you're one of those folks who like strains that smell like a baby's used diaper or something, lol. Or if "curing" is some exotic process that you're pretty sure you might have heard something about, once...
- Thread starter
- #58
You could have saved yourself a whole lot of typing and just said I was a dumb ass who didn't have a clue what I was talking about.
I have a couple of grows under my belt, and I've used a different medium a couple of times.
I've used foxfarm and Nature's care. I've always preferred the Nature's care more considering the price difference and me not seeing a difference at all growing one side by side same strain same environment.
As far as the perlite goes I wouldn't used 30% that sounds low to high.
I would also consider adding something like peat moss to make it a little lighter.
For pH levels just buy a pH test kit with the general hydroponics up and down most people like to use anywhere from 5.5 up to 6.5 depending on what stage your plants are in. You can read more about pH levels though in the different specific forums.
I've used foxfarm and Nature's care. I've always preferred the Nature's care more considering the price difference and me not seeing a difference at all growing one side by side same strain same environment.
As far as the perlite goes I wouldn't used 30% that sounds low to high.
I would also consider adding something like peat moss to make it a little lighter.
For pH levels just buy a pH test kit with the general hydroponics up and down most people like to use anywhere from 5.5 up to 6.5 depending on what stage your plants are in. You can read more about pH levels though in the different specific forums.
Well... I try to be polite (I typed "try,"
). And, for all I know, you're smarter than I am, more knowledgeable, or both. Finally... If I ever post something THAT short, people will probably worry that my account has been usurped by someone who occasionally takes a breath between sentences.In a soil grow, if you aim for a pH of 5.5, I can guess what stage your plants would be in, lol. I let the pH slowly fall to around there when running DWC hydroponics before adjusting it back up to ~5.85 (generally by adding more of what the feeding plants consume, occasionally by dumping/refilling).
I suppose if I was growing in soil and doing an emergency treatment for a severe elemental deficiency, I might try to feed that specific element at the pH that it is most available to the plant.
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