Grow Rooms 101 - What's Your Soil?

[MiOutdoorsman]

Just remembered I accidentally skipped over something important.

For the cheater blends (which there are many of) you want the perlite not less than 1/4 of the mix. I prefer around 1/3, a bit more is better. Good bag soil comes with some.

But more importantly is you need organic material in there for everything to live on and work. That is the real function of the manure. You could use dead leached manure and use a good tea and make it all good again. You can also Just use good nutes in perlite alone and then you gots a hempy bucket really. There is a rainbow spectrum between.

So something I glossed over that was important is when you want to lower the amount of manure in the cheater you do it by adding coco not more perlite.

You need organic matter in there and coco is great. The reason it is used in most applications is it absorbs nutrients. It has no nutrients inherently and is dead. Using that stuff it literally just cuts the power of your manure down without impacting the ratio of the blend.

See I was all high and got side tracked but the blend ratio is maintained ~1/3 perlite this way.

My understanding is Promix-HP is 1/3 perlite..but again I never used it. I just know from side by side experimentation less than 1/4 is shooting yourself in the foot. More than about 1/3 is not necessary but depending on "situation" results may vary.

You are pretty smart for a village idiot. Lol. I'm researching sub's recipe and going to start it this spring. I appreciate all your information. It's resparked my thoughts on super soil. I'm using FFOF and ff trio nutes at the moment

 

[Papageno]

When growing is a passion not a business you will get into this stuff. When the business becomes about profitability not can I get it through cure you will get into this stuff....at some point ....if you care about growing weed...you get into this.

People trying to make money bang out some sort of hydro setup and ram through as much as they can and that is fine if that is what they want to do.

Lots of ways to live life.

But I use this method both in hydro and soil. It makes things much easier. When things are easier there is less opportunity for error.

I can leave my grow for over a week with no real automation but the light timer and not worry using this method.

 

[MiOutdoorsman]

How do you leave for a week . Do you have a auto watering system

 

[MiOutdoorsman]

I'm currently working on a watering system because I go away once a month for 4 to 5 days. I don't like to dry my plants out to the point of wilting ( it has happened )

 

[Papageno]

In veg with the right sized pot you water once a week at most for best results. You want it to dry out between watering. In the right sized pot for most of veg and bloom it is about 1 week apart. Actually a bit longer when properly watered and potted (IMO).


Starts out about 2 weeks apart. Once they hit about what I call the early teens before puberty but while growing they need it about once a week and that is true until flowers start to bulk up and fill in many stages later.

You can let it go a few days dry...I can go a week and a half no problem and come back and give some water and they are fine probably better for it. I don't but I can.

When I am doing hydro..sometimes I am out there daily taking readings...sometimes multiple times a day. Sometimes I can let it go a week between readings but some times it needs some help.

With soil man it is all cruise control.

I make sure to wait to water until the plant shows it is thirsty with sagging leaves most of its life to improve and stimulate a better faster root system. Letting it dry out will get you to harvest faster.

 

[MiOutdoorsman]

When growing is a passion not a business you will get into this stuff. When the business becomes about profitability not can I get it through cure you will get into this stuff....at some point ....if you care about growing weed...you get into this.

People trying to make money bang out some sort of hydro setup and ram through as much as they can and that is fine if that is what they want to do.

Lots of ways to live life.

But I use this method both in hydro and soil. It makes things much easier. When things are easier there is less opportunity for error.

I can leave my grow for over a week with no real automation but the light timer and not worry using this method.

I'm pretty passionate about my my grow. It's my first grow and I know more than some that slacker their way thru. I'm only growing for my own personal stash. I grew tired of tossing money to dispensaries hopeing it would be good smoke and being disappointed. I thought I'd take matters into my own hands

 

[MiOutdoorsman]

If you don't mind me asking, what size pot are you using? I'm in depot 5 gal bucket with 8 1/2" holes drilled in the bottom. I have to water every other day. By day 3 they are looking wilted. 5 weeks in flower

 

[Papageno]

I don't like to dry my plants out to the point of wilting ( it has happened )

Myself and many others have explained proper watering on here umpteen times. There are stickies all over on it.

By not letting it dry out you are enabling it to get by with a smaller root mass.

What people fail to realize is the whole point of veg is to create as big a root mass as possible. The flower mass is directly related to root mass. You may get one big flower or many small ones but the weight is proportional to root mass. You want lots of roots fast.

Like training is positive stress making the roots search for water is positive stress. Forcing them to grow and fill that pot gets you success faster.

You want to over water by 10-15% each time as you want some run off to remove excess build up in the pot. Then you want it to dry out before you water again. You will know when if the leaves start to droop. That is ideal.

It's about a week actually a bit more in the right sized pot with lots of perlite.

 

[Steelerbill]

I'm currently running50/50 with soil and mushroom compost. Healthy and moving on up.

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[MiOutdoorsman]

Myself and many others have explained proper watering on here umpteen times. There are stickies all over on it.

By not letting it dry out you are enabling it to get by with a smaller root mass.

What people fail to realize is the whole point of veg is to create as big a root mass as possible. The flower mass is directly related to root mass. You may get one big flower or many small ones but the weight is proportional to root mass. You want lots of roots fast.

Like training is positive stress making the roots search for water is positive stress. Forcing them to grow and fill that pot gets you success faster.

You want to over water by 10-15% each time as you want some run off to remove excess build up in the pot. Then you want it to dry out before you water again. You will know when if the leaves start to droop. That is ideal.

It's about a week actually a bit more in the right sized pot with lots of perlite.

Well I have 5 gallon buckets with medium filled 7/8's to the top. I give a gallon of water every other day, with some runoff just like all the stickies and everyone says and still dropping by day 3. If I watered more it would all be in the pan under the pot. If I wait longer it will damage the plant. I week in soil seems a stretch to me

 

[MiOutdoorsman]

I never asked for a watering lesson. I was just wondering what size pot

 

[Papageno]

Pot size depends on program. The pics above...one was a 3 gallon pot the other was I think a 30 gallon...but huge because I wanted to fill that scrog.

So the pic a few pages back was of one I grew in the journal in the sig that was 1 week from cutting when I had to put it in to bloom. It went into a 3 gallon pot with some compost and cheater.

So the pot size depends on the plants ages requirements.

The general rule of thumb is 1 gallon per month which I find ridiculously small. I feel you should generally over build for many reasons. So if you have a sativa that is a 6 month plant, 8 gallons is barely much, 10 is a decent amount.

Subcools recipe is designed around a 10 gallon pot so there is time in Veg before it gets to the compost..but like I said I used a plant with no roots in a 3 gallon and "timed" it so it got there just right.

I would never grow in a pot less than 5 gallons unless you are doing clone direct into bloom. Any full cycle grow.... seed to plant, in a "normal sized grow"...like a 4x4 tent or something...should be in a 5+ gallon pot I recommend 10. The bigger it is the easier it is to deal with issues. The bigger it is the more flowers you can get.

So I knew I was budding for about 3 months and the clone was a week old so a 3 gallon would be just enough overkill right? See it has no roots yet and has to still get going so 3 gallons works as still overkill.

thems the numbers...from an idiot stoner.


I use all size pots just depends on what I am growing...how long...how big....Scrog or not....

 

[Papageno]

I never asked for a watering lesson. I was just wondering what size pot

My apologize.

 

[MiOutdoorsman]

My plants vegged for 6 1/2 weeks. Have been heathy and strong. I'm thinking maybe they are sorta root bound. Either way I'm going to keep on my schedule until harvest. It's working out. Should be 3 more weeks for my jillybean and 4 more for my space candy ( according to sub ) roundabouts

 

[MiOutdoorsman]

three plants fill my 4'/8'/80" tent nicely

 

[Blondhottie]

I love the pro mix

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[Papageno]

I'll go find it..somewhere in there I logged watering and you can see it very clearly what my feed and water schedule was. let me go look....

Here is one of many recap post with feed / watering schedules in that grow. You can easily tell that this day when I took pics they were thirsty.

VI's - Subcool Based - 2 Worm - Multi-Strain - Mother Hunt - 2016


This is a much better summary but it is also is harder to see that I am watering so infrequently.

VI's - Subcool Based - 2 Worm - Multi-Strain - Mother Hunt - 2016

 

[Demon42069]

Thanks for all the info village, been doing a lot of research into what direction to take my grow. Im sold on the living soil, seems a lot more natural to me.

So if i made a second compost with happy frog and no ammendments in it. Just the soil with worms and only ever add some trim, water and maybe half of the used soil from a grow. would this be too hot to use to top the pots with?
Sorry if you answered this already, Just trying to think of a way where i wouldnt need to buy soil to top the pots every grow.

Thinking of going for two 7gal trapper 2 pots in a scrog in my 3x4 tent with a 1000w.

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[Papageno]

So you don't use "compost only" up top ever. You could come up with some mix where it is diluted a lot and then use less in the bottom.


I say if it aint broke don't fix it. His recipe calls for top just standard soil blend and bottom the compost and that works well.



As far as amendments go. He uses a bunch but all of it is stuff basically mentioned earlier. You use that in the beginning of the compost. Some of it takes 6 months to really break down. So you may want to use cal mag in the beginning. Basically until it gets to 4 months you don't really want to use it without supplements. That is why the supplement business exists. Because it takes about 1 grow before soil is good. People don't want to wait or don't understand...whatever.

As you go you dump whatever you want in the pile to keep it at the desired size. At the beginning of a grow you have just pulled some from the pile and then just added some from the last grow. You do some math and figure out how much soil you just recycled in and add some more amendments to the soil for that much. So maybe you just recycled 8 gallons of soil. So do the calcs to figure how much more Bone meal and azomite and EWC and Coco...and all that stuff to add. It is easy. Better yet, do the calcs ahead of time for a fixed amount and just have it all figured out and recycle that much. You can easily figure out how much you are using. Maintain a good pile like 30% or more stays in there.

That said it really isn't baking you just need to be close. Once you got the pile going you don't need to add much. It all makes sense once you start doing it.


You can't really make a compost without "amendments" that is the point. So all those ingredients people were talking about... many of them need to be broken down to the constituent molecules to be used by the plant. That takes time. Some of that takes longer than a grow. So even though it is great stuff it isn't being utilized very much.

So this gets at the heart...buy a bottle with everything in it...or make a pile and brew something better than you can buy. But then you gotta be a brew master. It aint hard. People do them outside accidentally all the time.

When recycling you keep adding stuff as you take away and it is everything on the list. It stays fresh this way and also hot and ready to work. Each 4 month grow means the stuff just added has enough time cooking to rock and roll.


Lets talk about not buying soil real quick.

$20 bag of soil work for 4 plants when diluted...that is 5 bucks a plant.

In a 4x4 tent you could scrog 4 plants 4x4 and yield probably 2 pounds...$20 bag of soil.

You can not recycle some into the compost and let it stay dead ( I have done this) and then use it later. Basically just leave the stalk and roots in the pot and use it right at the last minute. I done that. I reused topsoil too. Usually I give it an EWC tea kick though.

From that grow if you look deep enough in the journal you will see I regrew one of them after harvest. I took it outside and revegged and then put it in the ground and re-bloomed it. So the soil is great for getting multiple grows out of a single plant too.


Don't forget to add a bunch of stuff you want to as well. Alfalfa and Kelp both can be gotten dries up in bags. Lots of things to add to make it awesome. Make the compost redonk all you want...just don't over do it and use too much and burn the plants.