Growing Without Bloom Nutes By Farside05

[farside05]

Man I would love a wall of jars like that from floor to ceiling lol. Congrats tho brother that was pretty good harvest.

Here you go Blaze. The entire home dispensary inventory. 14 strains, 32 jars, and that's before the Girl Scout Cookies, which will be strain 15 and take the total up to around 40 jars. Admittedly not every jar is full, but the majority are. You think I'm a bit of a hoarder? I think I have a growing addiction more than a smoking habit. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. That's as far as I got on that 12 step program.

 

[Blazinjones]

Here you go Blaze. The entire home dispensary inventory. 14 strains, 32 jars, and that's before the Girl Scout Cookies, which will be strain 15 and take the total up to around 40 jars. Admittedly not every jar is full, but the majority are. You think I'm a bit of a hoarder? I think I have a growing addiction more than a smoking habit. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. That's as far as I got on that 12 step program.

Jesus i cant wait till i start gettn jars filled up like that lol. Are those 1 gallon mason jars?

 

[farside05]

Jesus i cant wait till i start gettn jars filled up like that lol. Are those 1 gallon mason jars?

Standard quart jars.

 

[farside05]

Making my own soil-less mix (aka Faux-Mix)

Not everyone has access to Pro-Mix, but most towns have a Home Depot nearby. Here's my attempt at making a Pro-Mix HP copy.

First lets start with the ingredients:
1 - 3 cubic foot bale of Peat Moss
1 - 2 cubic foot bag of Perlite
1 - 6.75 pound bag of Espoma Garden Lime

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• farside05
• Apr 3, 2019

I'm making 20 gallons worth of soil-less mix. The kind folks at Premier Tech Horticulture tell us that Pro-Mix HP is 65-75% Peat Moss, the rest is Perlite. I'll measure out three 5 gallon containers of Peat Moss and one heaping 5 gallon container of Perlite. That will give me approximately a 70/30 mix of Peat Moss to Perlite. I compact it with my hand as I fill each 5 gallon grow bag. I want to make sure I have enough to fill each pot after it gets wet and settles.

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• farside05
• Apr 3, 2019

Next I'll hydrate the Peat with some water. Peat can be hydrophobic (repels water) when its moisture content drops below 30%. Mine was real dry so it took plenty of wetting and hand mixing to get it all wet. In hindsight, it would probably be easiest to do wet and mix in stages, like every 5 gallons of Peat added.

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• farside05
• Apr 3, 2019

Now its all moist. Hehe, I love using the word moist and how it sets some people off.

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• farside05
• Apr 3, 2019

Now its time to add the perlite. Here's the heaping 5 gallons of Perlite.

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• farside05
• Apr 3, 2019

I pour the Perlite over the 15 gallons of moist Peat and mix it in by hand.

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• farside05
• Apr 3, 2019

Time for Lime. Researching plenty of .edu (University websites) on how much Lime to add to a soil-less, Peat based mix, I find a consensus of 2 tablespoons for every gallon of soil you desire to make. I am making 20 gallons, so that's 40 Tablespoons or 2 1/2 cups worth of Lime.

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• farside05
• Apr 3, 2019

I sprinkle in half the Lime and hand mix it all in. I wore gloves at this point since Lime can be rough on exposed skin. After it was sufficiently mixed, I repeated the process.

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• farside05
• Apr 3, 2019

At this point I filled my 4 grow bags. I had a little left over, which is better than being short. I ran about 3 gallons of water through each with the garden hose to make sure it was all good and wet and to get the lime working. The fine folks at Premier Tech Horticulture also tell us on their website that it takes Pro-Mix about 3 days of being wet for the Lime in it to stabilize the pH of the media. So I'll let it sit for a couple days before using. My seeds haven't sprouted out of the Jiffy plugs yet so that's just fine. It took me about an hour and a half to do. Cost was about $38 for the materials. There should be enough Peat Moss for 2 batches, Perlite for 3, and the Lime will go a long way (guessing 5 or so).

 

[EastCoastGhost]

Cool, looks like a good mix to me. I’m excited to see how yield will go with your homade mix, I bet they will do fine in it

 

[farside05]

Cool, looks like a good mix to me. I’m excited to see how yield will go with your homade mix, I bet they will do fine in it✌

Big swing for the fences changing growing media and nutes in the same run. The Mega Crop has the same N value as Foliage Pro so I think my feed schedule will be nearly the same, and my Faux Mix should be nearly identical to Pro Mix. So I think everything will be just fine. Fingers crossed.

 

[Blazinjones]

Big swing for the fences changing growing media and nutes in the same run. The Mega Crop has the same N value as Foliage Pro so I think my feed schedule will be nearly the same, and my Faux Mix should be nearly identical to Pro Mix. So I think everything will be just fine. Fingers crossed.

Yup fingers are crossed for u to do great with this "moist" mix haha see what I did there.

 

[farside05]

Yup fingers are crossed for u to do great with this "moist" mix haha see what I did there.

Yep, and a good callback joke is a comedy staple.

 

[MrSauga]

Now its all moist. Hehe, I love using the word moist and how it sets some people off.

OMG not another one... it's wet man, not moist.


On another note, nice job with the mix. Looks great! I'll be watching how this pans out

 

[farside05]

OMG not another one... it's wet man, not moist.

Duncan Hines doesn't make a wet cake mix.

Poked my head in the tent before I left for work. Looks like one GSC and one Blue Dream are trying to make an appearance. By the time I get home in the AM I expect to see little cotyledons staring at me. Hopefully the other two seeds won't be far behind.

 

[InTheShed]

First off excellent numbers on the first half of the harvest!

Second off (why is that not an expression?) I completely understand your hording tendencies, as I too grow way more than anyone smokes. Though when it's time to make oil the supply gets noticeably lower.

Third off, and most moistly, terrific walk through on the soil (-less) making process! If I were going to duplicate it I'll probably use a bigger trough. It couldn't have been easy to mix all that together in a tight space.

One question...why not mix it all dry and then make it moist? Seems easier to blend that way.

I sent an email to my ProMix guy about what to add for a second run but haven't heard back.

 

[farside05]

First off excellent numbers on the first half of the harvest!

Second off (why is that not an expression?) I completely understand your hording tendencies, as I too grow way more than anyone smokes. Though when it's time to make oil the supply gets noticeably lower.

Third off, and most moistly, terrific walk through on the soil (-less) making process! If I were going to duplicate it I'll probably use a bigger trough. It couldn't have been easy to mix all that together in a tight space.

One question...why not mix it all dry and then make it moist? Seems easier to blend that way.

I sent an email to my ProMix guy about what to add for a second run but haven't heard back.

I really didn't think it was going to fill the whole wheelbarrow when I started or I might have taken a different path. Back when I worked in the family greenhouse we'd just dump it all out on a concrete pad, layer the products, then mix with a shovel. We would do 10 wheelbarrow loads at a time. I might have just rinsed off a spot on the driveway and taken that route If I were doing more than 20 gallons worth.

I mixed it moist rather than dry because 1) I realized that I was gonna have a whole wheelbarrow full after adding the 15 gallons of peat and knew it was probably gonna be a bit difficult to rehydrate it. I wanted the extra space to mix it before I added the perlite. 2) I did the lime as a separate step from mixing in the perlite since the lime is caustic to skin and I figured I'd have to mix longer to get everything blended, and the less contact with my hands and arms the better. At least that was my rationale. Actual Pro-Mix has a wetting agent in it to make it easier to rehydrate. Had I used some type of wetting agent. I'd probably just spray the peat with it, then mix it relatively dry, then hydrate in the containers.

 

[InTheShed]

I'm looking forward to watching this experiment even though I don't own a wheelbarrow!

Oh, I also sent an email to Greenleaf to see how they felt about me grinding their balls. I need to order more and wanted their opinion first.

 

[farside05]

I'm looking forward to watching this experiment even though I don't own a wheelbarrow!

Oh, I also sent an email to Greenleaf to see how they felt about me grinding their balls. I need to order more and wanted their opinion first.

Hehehe. You said grinding balls...

I'd figure you'd have a wheelbarrow or yard cart to assist with all the plant moving.

 

[InTheShed]

Lift with the legs!

 

[farside05]

Weights are in for the Girl Scout Cookies: 145.8 grams (5.14 oz) of smokable bud, 128.1 grams (4.52 oz) of bud for edibles. I grade mine out so that main colas and other smaller tops are "smokables" and under/fluffier bud gets tagged "edibles". So a total of 273.9 grams or 9.66 ounces. Couple that up with the 9.13 from the Gorilla Glues and the total yield from the grow was 18.79 ounces. Shy of the 20 ounce goal but a new personal best in my tent. Previous best was 18.5, so I didn't shatter it, but a win is a win.

On to the next grow. I brought in the pots from outside. Cleaned out the tent, and got everything else in the grow area spruced up. I have 3 babies starting at me now. Waiting on number 4 to appear.

 

[EastCoastGhost]

Congrats Farside on breaking your records. Them Blue Dream have the potential to be huge so you might smash it again this grow. I got over 14oz off the biggest one I had in the comparative I’m excited to follow along for these Blue Dream.

 

[Preston9mm]

I'm just here to keep the oyster moister!



Not sure how I've missed like 12 pages, but....

I look forward to seeing the soilless/peat mix. Lookin' good homie!

 

[InTheShed]

Nice job breaking your tent record! Every day in every way, we're getting better and better.

Things look clean and ready for liftoff in there now.

On the Megacrop front, here is their response:
"You can just mix a liquid concentrate, like 100grams in 1 Liter. Then you can use 10ml = 1 gram Mega Crop as an easy way to dose, and get a very uniform measurement! It seems like that is what you are concerned about."

And when I asked about how long that mixture would keep, they said:
"It should last very long. The nutrient miners do not degrade in solution."

I don't know what nutrient miners are, but "It should last very long" seems reasonable, if a bit ESL.

 

[MrSauga]

"You can just mix a liquid concentrate, like 100grams in 1 Liter. Then you can use 10ml = 1 gram Mega Crop as an easy way to dose, and get a very uniform measurement! It seems like that is what you are concerned about."

I'm confused! The reason you crushed the balls, if I recall correctly, was because you were concerend that one scoop had different amounts of Ca then the next, and you had no accurate way of making sure each scoop had the same amount of nutrients in it.
It was along those lines I think.

So, if you make 5 batches at 100g each in 1L containers, how do you know they are the same? It seems to me there was nothing gained from his response.